The winter sports season went very well and offered many different opportunities. The choices for winter sports this year were boys’ basketball, girls’ basketball, boys’ squash, girls’ squash, dance, and swimming. There were not many cancelled games, and the weather was on our side. Michelle Crowley, the director of athletics and wellness had this to say about the winter sports season: “Generally speaking I am ready to go outside in the spring. In my opinion the winter season seems very long, but all of our winter teams have done very well in this growth period. The winter sports season in the end went very well.”
The main thought expressed by middle school students was that they want to continue the sport they chose for the winter in their future sport careers. In terms of eighth grade, most students are thinking about the transition from middle school sports to high school sports. 8th grader Devlin Kolimago had this to say about the topic: “I hope to do squash in the high school. This was my first year in squash, and I feel I did well. Having to wake up early to go to practice before school will be something I have never done before. I am looking forward to playing with more experienced players to test my abilities.”
In terms of sixth graders, they have ended their first winter sports season. Usually sixth graders use their first seasons to choose their permanent sport for the future. Sixth graders Lauren Hexstall and Kristina Sullivan did dance and stated, “It was really fun learning dance, and it was fun getting to know people from different grades. Also, it was exciting to dance in front of our parents. We had an amazing teacher, and we are both going to continue dance.”
From our athletic trainer’s perspective, injuries were down this year. Athletics trainer Kevin Bolton explained, “We didn’t have as many catastrophic injuries this year, meaning that people didn’t miss a lot of time, which is good. As far as the injuries that do occur, the ankle sprains and stuff like that were down as well. There were people who started of the season with injuries, and were able to recover quickly. Winter is definitely the longest season. It has the most sports offered which includes wrestling. This year the wrestling team didn’t have as many injuries as they usually do, and that is due to strength and conditioning. Overall, the teams did pretty well.”
As a whole the Friends’ Central community believed the middle school winter sports season went great. We are now all ready to move into the spring season with many different sport opportunities.
by Christian Whitfield ’23 & Solomon Murphy ’23