By Kristy Kocot and Tillie Davies
“The great thing about high school sports is that you start fresh every season,” said boys soccer coach Peter Abed. Every spring sports coach is eager to begin their new victorious seasons.
Coach Abed looks forward to the start of a new season and building a team. The boys soccer program competes for the conference championship every year. “We have been very successful using that as our base goal for every season and then working from there,” said Coach Abed.
The boys soccer team has competed for regular season and conference tournament championships the past two years. “Our goal as a group will be to get past the second round of regionals this year, [since] that is where our season ended last year after winning the conference championship,” said Coach Abed.
Girls soccer coach Ally Hodgkins-Wagner also looks forward to the spring season. “We have tons of talent coming in and a great group of girls that represent T.C. Soccer fabulously,” she said. Her main goal for this season is to focus and to get back to the state championship, in which they played in 2016. She hopes to maintain the momentum that the team had last season. Girls soccer wants to win another conference championship.
Baseball started off this season with a new coach, Dave Latham, a history and AP psychology teacher at T.C. “This is my first year as the coach, so I’m focusing on future success over past results,” he said. Latham wants to achieve double digit wins and is hoping to compete for the district title this year.
Both girls lacrosse coach Allison Mullen and boys lacrosse coach Michael Wilcox had largely successful seasons last year. The lacrosse teams will both compete in the Gunston District against less competitive teams, which they hope will lead to more wins.
Crew and outdoor track have also had many successful seasons in the past. Indoor track runners are coming off of a district championship win, and look to repeat in the outdoor track season. Both crew and track have many talented athletes and expect to perform well this season.
Softball coach Kathleen Frawley is excited about the spring season as well as playing in a new district. She is eager to work with new talented eighth graders coming in as well as returning JV and varsity players. She would like to see the team score more runs and have more aggressive base running. “The T.C. softball program has been a program on the rise for the past several years, and it would be really great to keep that momentum going,” said Frawley.
The girls and boys tennis coaches are excited to begin the new season too. Girls tennis coach Artur Kalil looks forward to having a successful season on the court against the new district opponents. “Victoria Peace, Karinna Papke, Sophie Johnson, Yamsuf Kidane, Grace Salmons, and Alex Mathews will make up our most experienced starting lineup in years,” he said. They would like to go to the district championships and expect competitive matches against West Potomac and Annandale.
Rugby Coach Jeff Murphy is looking forward to this year’s season. His main goal is to “have more students playing and to get increased support from the school.” He would also like to improve the team’s status compared to other sports.