By David Wagner
The WAHS Winter Sports Banquet March 1 had a big turnout and turned out to be a fun night for the winter season athletes and coaches. Adding to an already successful fall season, the Warriors collected several more district and regional championships, two state runners-up and the varsity boy’s basketball team is still playing. They will play a state quarterfinal game in Harrisonburg on Saturday night at 8:15 p.m. at the JMU Convocation Center.
Sportsmanship and MVP awards were given for all winter sports, excluding boys basketball since their season isn’t over yet. However, starting forward Christian Pierce (Head Football Coach Ed Pierce’s son), earned District and Region Player of the Year awards.
Principal Dave Francis noted that through the fall and winter seasons WAHS has won 11 district titles in 14 varsity sports. This is truly remarkable. Congratulations to all the student athletes at WAHS.
The 13 teams that competed in winter sports include cheerleading, freshmen basketball girls and boys, junior varsity basketball girls and boys, varsity basketball girls and boys, indoor track girls and boys, swimming and diving girls and boys, wrestling and academic competition.
District championships were won by JV girls basketball (regular season and playoff), girls indoor track, boys indoor track, varsity boys basketball, boys and girls swimming and academic competition.
Regional championships were won by boys and girls indoor track and varsity boys basketball. The girls swimming team might have added a region championship, given the opportunity, but it was cancelled due to the weather. They did finish second at states, as did the girls indoor track team. The boys swimming and boys indoor track teams both finished eleventh at states.
Notable individual achievements: Zach Lawson won the district, regional and state championships in the pole vault with a vault of 14’ 6” and Nicole Harding won the district, regional and state championships for pole vault on the girls side with a vault of 10’ 6”. This was the first time in Western’s 34-year history that they had won district, region and state championships in both boys and girls pole vault. Max Weiner was fifth at regionals in wrestling, Hao Chin Li was second at regionals and fourth at states in academic competition and Alex Poletti finished fourth at states for diving.
For a complete list of award recipients see below.
