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SPORTS TALK

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with Michael Betteridge

Catoctin High School spring sports began with some pretty big news. With the retirement of Athletic Director Keith Bruck, who moved up north to take over at Fairfield, Catoctin began the search process for a new athletic director. 

Since WTHU arrived on the sports scene in 2008, Catoctin High School has had three great athletic directors: Tom Sherald, Kevin McMullen, and Keith Bruck. 

Sherald was a local guy all the way and Kevin McMullen was, too. Keith Bruck worked at Catoctin for 22 years, with his eye on the job all the way back to when he was assistant athletic director for eleven years, and finally landed his dream job as athletic director for the past six years. All three of these guys were local products.

Now, Catoctin has gone all the way to Waldorf, Maryland, to find its next athletic director: Brett Campbell.  Campbell, the former head basketball coach of the St. Charles Trojans, guided his team all the way to the 3A State Championship at College Park this past March, where they lost by three points to Northeast. Coach Campbell and his family have moved to Thurmont, and we welcome him into our Cougars family! A special shout-out to Coach Rich who stood in as temporary athletic director during the search process. Thanks, Coach Mike!

Spring sports are finished at Catoctin, so let’s put a ribbon on a great season.

Baseball 

What can you say about Coach Franklin and his guys. Year after year, game after game, they always “bring it.” Sitting atop the dugout, over and over again, I would smile while I listened to Coach Franklin “coaching up” his players. At times, he would laugh, at times he was stern, but he never let his players off the hook without a smile and a twinkle in his eye when he spoke to them. Every player on that team knew that Coach Franklin and his staff had their backs. 

Catoctin had some exciting bats this year. Brayden Grable batted .392 on the season, followed by Bryont Green at .340.  Castellow provided some clutch hitting, along with Jake Bell, Garrett Worth, Gavin Watkins, and Patrick Morlan. Last year, the team to beat was Clear Spring. This year, Brunswick ended the Cougars season in the regionals.

Softball 

We couldn’t help but wonder what this team would have been with Taylor Smith in the circle, but between the Cougars amazing bats and some pretty awesome pitching from Aubrey Courtney and Kassidy Kreitz, the pain of Taylor’s injury faded into the distance. 

Catoctin softball led all categories in county softball at the plate. Bralyn West had an amazing season! She led the county in hitting, with a .679 batting average and 6 homers.  Meghan Gray led the county in home runs with 10 and RBIs with 34. Kassidy Kreitz had 7 homers and 31 RBIs, second place in the county.  Courtney and Kreitz took on the role in the circle to overpower opponents for a combined 15 wins. That is not too shabby for the smallest high school in Frederick County to lead in all those categories. The Lady Cougars battled all the way to the regionals, where they ended the season against Liberty.

Lacrosse 

Catoctin boys and girls pulled the No. 3 seed in the brackets, where they both lost to Middletown—the boys in the semis, and the girls in the regional finals.

Track and Field

The Catoctin boys track team won their meet at Fort Hill in the regionals with some notable standouts.

Senior Furious Trammel captured first in the 400 meter dash, the Triple Jump, the Long Jump, and in the 4×400 meter relay with teammates Ronald Etzler, Gavin Sheetz, and Dennis Lease. Gavin Sheetz placed second in the 110 meter hurdles and third in the 300 meter hurdles.  Gabriel Riling won the 1600 and 3200 meter runs and placed second in the 800 meter run. Dennis Lease won the 800 meter run. 

The Catoctin girls track team finished eighth in their meet with a fourth place show in the 4×800 meter relay run by teammates Olivia Baker, Katelyn Bell, Anjiston Casne, and Keira Taylor.

Tennis

Finishing in the playoff brackets in singles for the boys was Zach Kerr and for the girls was Grace Bell. In boys doubles: Daniel Martin and Jackson Starliper; girls doubles: Anessa Stauffer and Lillian Holden; and in mixed doubles: Elliana Mucker and Magnus Moore.

To the Catoctin spring sports seniors, Brayden Grable, Bryont Green, Anthony Kinnamont, Patrick Morlan, David Shipton, Gavin Watkins, Garrett Worth, Charles Dougherty, Randy Hall, Alexander Hauk, Ben Krauss, Haydn Matthews, Vince Reaver, McKenna Gisrael, Malin Grongstad, Allison Kelly, Abbey Shaffer, Anessa Stauffer, Bryce Bowers, Santiago Canadas Fraga, RJ Etzler, Wayne Ferson, Anthony Kinnamount, Dennis Lease, Timothy McCarthy, Gabriel Riling, David Stitely, Furious Trammel, Meghan Gray, and Reagan Miller: Thanks for all you have done for Catoctin sports during your high school careers. May your new journey be even more successful!

SPORTS
TALK

By On · Add Comment · In Sports News

with Michael Betteridge

What Are They Putting In the Food at Catoctin High School?

Whatever they are feeding those kids up in Thurmont, it’s working. Two out of the four spring sports teams at Catoctin (baseball, softball, lacrosse, and tennis) are in first place, and the third team of the four, boy’s lacrosse, is in third place. All that from the smallest school in Frederick County!

The Catoctin baseball team is #1 in Frederick County and undefeated up until mid-April; the Catoctin softball team just knocked the undefeated Walkersville team out of first place in the county, with a tense 1-0 nail-biting win. The Catoctin Lady Cougars are now no.1 in Frederick County softball. The Lady Cougars will face Walkersville again at Walkersville on May 1. If you can, you probably want to make it over to Walkersville for that one.

The softball team’s average grade level is 10th grade, with two freshmen, five sophomores, and two junior starters. The team is batting .323 with a 41 percent on-base average. That means that one out of three times at the plate, they get a hit, and slightly less than half of their plate appearances produce runners on the bases. Top level college softball teams would be jealous of those stats.

And this is just the beginning! With the average age of this softball team not even in its prime yet, you can expect big things in Thurmont for the next three years under Coach Jessica Valentine who is in her 14th season at Catoctin.

Coach Valentine brought a winning tradition and legacy to this team as a former player who graduated in 2002. Coach Valentine went on to play college softball for Mars Hill University, just north of beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. One of the ways she has promoted the amazing Cougars’ legacy is with the “Wall of Fame” on the back of the Cougars softball dugout. Former players’ names and handprints are stenciled onto the concrete during homecoming. When this season’s players arrive at the field, the first thing they see are the names of winners from the recent past, like Courtney Eyler, Ashley Mayton, and Reagan Smith. They dream of some day having their name written on that sacred space. 

The Lady Cougars are an amazing softball team. Everyone on the team contributes, all the way down the roster, top to bottom. Whether its Catcher Megan Gray making backwards-diving foul ball catches at the backstop for the out, or the red-hot Taylor Smith throwing 70+mph underhand fastballs from the pitching mound, these Cougars are talented and deep. In the outfield, Maddie Ohler snags fly balls at the fence backhanded, looking over her shoulder, and then steps up to the plate and wallops a two-run homer over the fence in right center. She is joined by teammates Julie West in left field and McKenzie Lewis in right who routinely rob hitters of base hits in the outfield. At the plate, patience is a virtue, especially for third baseman Aubrie Courtney, who consistently takes opposing pitchers deep into the count to combine with her teammates for a league high 24 walks already this season. 

The infield tandem of Mazaleski at second and Reagan Smith at first base handle a lot of hot grounders, with right-handed batters swinging behind Smith’s blistering fast balls.  Over at shortstop, Kassidy Kreitz, with her cat-like reflexes, doesn’t let much get by her, and she is one of the most consistent base runners on the team. 

Meisner, Brawner, and Owens come in to relieve teammates as pinch runners and, in the field, to give the defensive starters a rest.

Just to give you some perspective on this young team: They have put up 79 runs in eight games, averaging almost 10 runs per game while only giving up 8 runs….only 1 run per game by the opposing team. That’s a 10-1 average per game.

Whatever they are feeding those kids, I’m going to invite myself to dinner because I need some of what they’ve got! Since I seem to be on a food thing, and with Cinco de Mayo just around the corner, I’ll wrap it up this way: THIS TEAM IS THE WHOLE ENCHILADA!

Sports Previews for Spring

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Blair Garrett

As temperatures rise, the snow begins to melt, and February comes to a close, high school spring sports will be kicking into high gear.

A cast of new athletes are coming in to provide Catoctin High athletics spring sports teams with the energy, drive, and dedication to be successful on and off the field. Catoctin spring sports include: boys baseball, girls softball, boys and girls lacrosse, and tennis.

Baseball. The Cougars look to improve on last season’s 6-4 record. The team has multiple matchups versus Boonsboro and Brunswick on its plate, which may be the deciding factor for the success of Catoctin High’s season. With a crop of talented athletes across the field, Catoctin Baseball appears to have another strong season in the works. The season tees off  March 21, against familiar foe Gov. Thomas Johnson.

Softball. Catoctin Softball’s 11-4 2018 season was a smashing success, and the team hopes to replicate its winning ways for the 2019 campaign. The team was bounced by the Bohemia Manor Eagles in the Maryland Girls Softball State Championships, but the Cougars’ trail back to the playoffs runs through its rivalry games early in the season.

Boys Lacrosse. Catoctin Lacrosse struggled across the board last season, but with a fresh team, fresh year, and a fresh mindset, the boys head into the 2019 season with the goal to continue improving. Getting off to a strong start might make the difference for the Cougars. The team kicks off its season in an away game on March 26 against Gov. Thomas Johnson.

Girls Lacrosse. After a rough previous season, Catoctin Girls Lacrosse has its sights set on a new start, as the team kicks off its season versus North Hagerstown on March 21. A win in the first game of the season could turn the tides and build confidence for the team moving forward.

Tennis. Catoctin Tennis kicks off with back-to-back matches March 21 and March 22 in back-to-back exhibition matches against local rivals, Boonsboro and Linganore. The team will look to get back into the win column after its hot start last season.