Fall sports may be coming to a close but winter sports tryouts are just around the corner, starting today excluding the ice hockey team, whose games have already started, student athletes are preparing for a winning season.
Winter sports consist of girls’ and boys’ basketball, co-ed winter track, co-ed swim and dive, poms, cheerleading, wrestling, bocce, and ice hockey.
Today is the first day of boys’ and girls’ basketball tryouts. Both teams have three days of tryouts, today, Saturday and Monday. Reflecting on the 2023-2024 season where the boys basketball team went to state quarter finals, the outlook is promising for this year. “I’m excited for the season to start, considering how well we did last year, I have high hopes. The team is looking good and we have been putting in the work during the off season to prepare ourselves,” junior Chase Mitchell said.
The girls’ basketball team is hoping to improve their record from the 2023-2024 season as they had an average performance. “Last season was OK Despite our stats, I had a really fun time with my teammates so I’m looking forward to doing it all over again. Hopefully we can pick it up this season and show up for ourselves and the team,” sophomore Malia Bellamy said.
Co-ed winter track, also referred to as indoor track, is a common sport student athletes participate in for the purpose of off-season training. Baseball, football and lacrosse players all tend to gravitate toward running in the winter so they can keep their bodies in shape and endurance up. Practices are held five days a week and times range, depending on which event the athlete partakes in. There are meets held starting in December for athletes who wish to compete.
Continuing from the fall season into winter is the poms team. The poms team consist of 19 girls who choreograph and perform dance routines at half time during the home football and basketball games. However, a big change from the fall season to the winter is that the poms team enters their competition season. “The team has to put a lot more time and work into the winter season considering our routines go from an average two- three minutes to five minutes,” sophomore Madison Luxenberg said.
The ice hockey team kicked off their season with a 14-0 win over Northwest/QO on Friday, Oct. 18. The top scorers of the game include senior Sam Hosier, senior Nathan Tai, and junior Justin Heller. “It felt really good to start the season with such an incredible win. Getting back into the groove can be difficult but luckily we were able to pick it up really fast and pull out 14 goals,” Heller said.
The next three games were all wins, with final scores of 11-4 against Bethesda Chevy Chase (BCC) on Oct. 28, 3-1 against Upper Montgomery on Nov. 1, and 13-4 against RAM on Nov. 8.
The next game is being played today at 8:10 p.m. against Richard Montgomery at the Cabin John ice rink.
