All Teams Show Potential to Start the Season
Hunter Langley, Caroline Surratt, Luke Randall
Swim and Dive is off to a strong start this year. The team won the Tri-City championship, an annual meet against intra-town schools Saint Stephens Saint Agnes (SSSAS) and Bishop Ireton (BI), for the first time in TC history. SSSAS has won the Mayor’s Trophy for the last three years. TC has an entirely new swim staff this year–a change that was announced only weeks before the season began.
Throughout the battle between the Titans, BI Cardinals, and SSSAS Saints, TC took four out of six; among the 18 Individual events the Titans finished in the top three in 13 of them. All of the TC first place finishes (22 out of 26 possible) set new meet records. The Men’s Medley Relay–seniors Lutfi Lasida and Brendan Huber-Wilker, sophomores Quinn Hardimon and Ronan Lauinger–broke the team record by three seconds which is also a state qualifying meet time. Hardimon said, “I was like butter on a roll.”
Head coach John Gullickson said, “…it is an incredible and humbling experience. I wanted very badly for the Titans to achieve something together and to see their passions, support and focus to the goal is rewarding in itself.”
The indoor track team hit the ground running as senior Ibrahim Bangura set the fastest time in the country for the 55 meter dash at 6.43 seconds on December 1. Bangura said, “It’s a dream come true, but it’s also a wake up call that now that I’m on top I have to work twice as hard to stay on top.”
The wrestling team has also seen some early success. The team is benefiting tremendously in the upper weight classes from the addition of linemen from the football team. Sophomore Jackson Sullivan, a heavyweight, started off the season with four straight wins with pins in both the scrimmages in the first varsity match of the season. Sullivan said, “As you can see, I am quite the athlete.”
Along with Sullivan there is junior Nicholas Winkel, another football player, who is doing similar things for the junior varsity squad. He piled up two pins including a thriller in double overtime in the December 12 meet at TC. Wink said after the match, “I did it for the brisket.”
The girls basketball team is having a fantastic start to their season, winning three of their first four games. Head Coach Lisa Willis, who was recently hired, said, “We’ve had good days and we’ve had bad days, but honestly I can say that every day we’ve been together, we’ve grown as a team. Even in defeat we’ve gotten better. That’s big for me. We’re not the traditional varsity team. Our ‘small’ players are taller than our ‘big’ players. Half our team didn’t even play last year. We didn’t even know who would be in our program until 10 days before out first match. So, while developing skills is important, our mental toughness and capacity has a matches level of importance. We play hard, we fight until the end, we compete. I can’t ask for more.”
Senior guard Trinity Palacio has been lighting it up this season on both ends of the floor. Against Yorktown she had a monster stat line of 23 points, six assists, four rebounds, and two steals.
The boys basketball team is still finding their identity. Their struggles so far owe mostly to a lack of size on their roster–especially when compared with the tallest players of their opponents.
Coach Darryl Prue, however, is not trying to make the players something they are not and has essentially installed “positionless basketball”–winning games with well rounded, capable players, not one or two key athletes. Against a Wakefield team comprised of mostly upperclassmen T.C. was able to almost win the game, eventually losing in overtime, despite falling far behind early in the game. So far their record is two wins and two losses–already half the win total of the entire season last year.
Junior forward Ricardo Ross has been electrifying with the ability to hit the three point ball and slam soaring dunks. Ross said, “When adversity hits, keep going. It is going to pay off.”