When one is cursed, their luck falls. They are stuck in a lull, unable to get out. Take the Chicago Cubs, for instance. They were cursed for over 100 years, deemed unable to clinch the title of World Champions. But as the country saw on Nov. 2, curses can be broken.
Sometimes it is hard to tell whether a team is cursed or they’re just really, really bad, but being cursed isn’t always about losing games.
The field hockey team was running high after their road to states last year. Then, head coaches Kearney Blandamer and Leslie Stroot announced their resignation at the end of the season.
This was the first stroke of bad luck for the team. After a lengthy hiring process, athletic director Chris Thompson was able to hire Joann Engstrom, coach of the Washington Wolves. The team was excited to start a new beginning. Much to their dismay, Engstrom backed out of the job two months before the season began after she received an offer to coach at the University of Maryland.
“It was like a bad dream,” junior Jamie Glaser said. “We were cursed.”
Not long after Engstrom quit, Simon Fowler stepped up to coach the team. Given his experience playing field hockey in high school and his three years spent watching his daughter play on the team, he decided he was ready. Just like that, the curse was lifted.
Fowler led the team to become a unit, and allowed their team chemistry to grow. “Having Simon become the coach was the best possible scenario from this situation. This season was one of my favorites,” senior Shannon Welty said.
Girls’ soccer also faced a similar curse of losing coaches. After losing coach Tracey Seek after the 2012 season, the girls were coached by Wootton alum Andrew Ratti, and never went far in the postseason under his coaching. In the 2014 season, the girls got out in the first round of playoffs. In early 2015, Ratti announced his resignation and the girls were stuck without a coach, yet again.
After what had seemed like almost an eternity, it was announced that Elizabeth Seligman would be the new coach of the soccer squad. The girls have had two successful seasons with Seligman, making it to regional finals this year and sectional finals last year. “I feel like we’re so lucky we have had Liz the past two years, we couldn’t have gone anywhere without her,” junior Ashley Pitt said.
Some curses- like field hockey’s and soccer’s- can be broken, some cannot.
Football seems to suffer from a curse of never being able to make it to playoffs.
The last time the team won more than five games in the regular season was in 2008, and the last time football won a title was in 1990.
It seemed as if the boys stood a chance to finally make it to playoffs after winning the first two games of the season, but the team would only go on to win two more games.

Julia Stern

Online Editor