HS athletics recaps for September 11-17

Volleyball
The Tigers traveled to Mount Juliet, Tennessee last Thursday to play district opponent Mount Juliet Christian Academy. The Tigers had the advantage based on the current district records for both teams. Although the match was incredibly slow from both sides of the nets, the Tigers came out as the winners in just 3 sets (25-11, 25-12, 25-11). 

Match Stat Leaders: 

Aces - Sarah (4)

Kills - Flora (10)

Digs - Mia (9)

Blocks - Mia, Flora, Zoe, Yori (1)

Assists - Mia (23)

The Tigers headed to Donelson over the weekend to play in DCA’s Block Party Tournament. They had strong play and their experience helped to prepare them to move into the final weeks of their season.

Join us in Sperling next Thursday, September 24th for Senior Night where we’ll celebrate our seniors in their final home game of the regular season.

The Tigers continued their district play on Tuesday with a 9-0 win over Ezell Harding. With composed, unselfish play, the team had goal contributions from 8 different players including Johnsie Dawkins, Hannah Smith, Lainey Theobald, Elisabeth Crane, Celeste Green, Emily Mallal, Abigail Manoukian, and Surina Birdee.

Both the USN boys' and girls' golf teams qualified for the Region Championships next week.  The girls were second, and the boys were third.  Lucia Gellert won the girls' individual competition outright with a career-low score of 74.

The tournaments were held at Pine Creek Golf Course in Mount Juliet under the heat dome to which we have been accustomed for the last several weeks.  As the day wore on, the players fought not to wear down.  

The girls' tournament was a more straightforward affair.  Lucia Gellert opened with a double-bogey 6 on the first hole after her drive was lost in the trees and the brush to the left, but she played her next 17 holes in par figures, including a spectacular eagle 3 on the 2nd hole, her 11th, to finish in 74.  Arden McLean, playing in her first postseason action, got around in 114.  The girls' 188 total was good for second place behind Goodpasture, and Lucia won the individual event by several shots.

The veteran leadership of the boys' team showed from the start.  Senior captains Daniel Law and Henry Baxter set the pace.  Daniel was sitting at +2 late in the round, but had some struggles as the temperatures crept towards triple digits, but he salvaged a sub-80 score with a 79.  Henry too had one of his best rounds, signing his card for a 79 to match Daniel's score.

Gil Jones and Max Parker had their best tournaments of the year by several strokes under the pressure of the win-or-go-home scenario, both scoring tremendous 83s, Max punctuating his with a majestic up-and-down for par on the last hole from 40 yards out.  

As Wyatt Murphy, also playing his first tournament, came towards the last green, we realized something was wrong.  When a coach told me Henry had scored 79, I had thought that Henry had scored 80, and upon further review, he had turned in a scorecard for the wrong score, having given himself 4 on the 18th hole when he had, in fact, scored a 5.  In typical Tiger fashion, Henry reported the error to the tournament officials.  Even in the sweltering heat, the cold brutality of the unyielding rules of golf was no relief, and in accordance with the rules, Henry was disqualified.

This meant that we believed that Wyatt needed to get down from near the green in three strokes to force a playoff with DCA, which Wyatt duly did.  He added his scores up and said that he had shot 90, but fortunately, Coach Justin Fitzpatrick is better at math than he is (at present), and his score was 89, which forced the playoff.

Questions then arose about whether we would be eligible to participate in the playoff, the rules of which stipulate that each team sends all five players out to play a single hole, the scores are totaled, and the low score advances.  With one of our players disqualified, we wondered if we would even be eligible to play off.  On the other side, DCA had two of their players leave the site, and they could not return to play the playoff for various logistical reasons.  Many calls were made to TSSAA officials to get a ruling; no phones were picked up.  It was agreed that the logical thing to do in this situation would be to have a playoff with the maximum number of players possible, which for us was either four or five, but for them was only three.  This meant that their failure to have all players present would give them an insurmountable advantage, and hence they deemed themselves ineligible to play off, which gave us the third-place finish necessary to advance.

Coach Hickman of DCA simply said, "Your player showed great integrity in following the rules by disqualifying himself; we could do no less than that by withdrawing from the playoff since our players weren't here to participate in it."

The boys finished on 334 (would have been 325 had Henry been allowed to adjust his score to the correct 80), tying with DCA and four back of Clarksville Academy on 330.  Nashville Christian won the tournament on 305.  We lost a trophy because of the disqualification, but we gained much more in the esteem of our competitors and, hopefully, ourselves.

Torrential downpours and tornadic winds on Friday turned the normally lightning fast Chickasaw Trails course into a much sloppier one (perhaps best suited for "mudders," as in horse racing). Saturday was luckily rain-free racing, but humid air and a muddy course presented challenges - ones that the Tigers overcame!

The varsity girls kicked the morning off under blue skies with a terrific team effort that led them to a 2nd place overall team finish. With a score of 112, they out ran 22 other small school teams, including our familiar region opponent and last year's TN girls state champs, BGA, who placed 3rd. Leading the way for the Tigers was senior Madeleine Wiseman with a 4th place finish, followed closely by Jackie Seale (16th) and Penny Borinstein (19th and a PR). Norah Harrison (35th) and Sydney Lasher (38th and a PR) completed our scoring top five, with Adelaide Ritter (51st) and Charlotte Kehler (52nd) rounding out our top seven. Special shout outs go to Charlotte for a redemptive finish after a fall in the second mile, Greenlee Davidson for a double barrier breaker PR, Layla Jahangir for a gritty debut race, and Ella Apthorp for muscling through ongoing quad pain. On the day, 4 of the 10 earned personal best times, with the rest running at least a season best. Much to celebrate from the day, but just as much room for improvement. We will be back on the same line in three weeks time, and no doubt chasing down even lower scores and faster times. 

The varsity boys were next, running up in the Large Schools race (we would have easily won the Small Schools division) for stronger competition. That proved true, but the boys were led by 3 PRs in the top 5 group (Caleb Freifeld (running the 4th fastest time in school history), Drew Zwerner (6th fastest in school history), and Ike Tift (our fastest-ever 5th runner), pushing the team to the fastest top-5 average in school history and a 7th place finish among 39 strong squads.

The JV runners also competed well, with the all 9th and 10th grade girls led by Lucy Garrison's PR. Lena LeClere was next to cross for the jv girls, followed by Liliane Mokhtari and Olive Lueken who also earned over 1 minute PRs. Mia Seltzer rounded out the girls 5 with a strong first race of her season. The boys had all 5 scoring runners PR, by Oren Schwartz's fine 19:25 PR (kudos to Abe Boehler, Ram Chitale, Kireet Annam, and Devin McAteer). Wyatt Omary, Knox Followill, Aayen Parikh, Lucas Nichols Boller, and Taylor Tyska also all posted best times.

Complete meet results available HERE.

These Tigers have some time until they are back on a different AL starting line at the ON Twilight meet on the 26th. Until then, they'll be putting in the work to run down even more personal and maybe even a few school records.

The MTB team returned to Oakfield, Tennessee just outside of Jackson on September 13 to take part in the second race of the season as part of the 5-race series hosted by the NICA/TICL League. Click here for the full race report.