The second year of Harker’s summer wrestling camp expanded on last summer’s successes and brought together a team of qualified coaches, as well as special guest Anthony Robles, the 2011 NCAA National Champion in the 125-pound weight class.
Among the staff at this year’s camp was legendary local wrestling coach Jay Lawson. A De Anza Hall of Fame inductee and longtime supporter of Harker’s wrestling program, Lawson brought decades of experience to help camp attendees perform at their very best. “Jay has been a mentor of mine since I was in my early 20s. When we first got into the league that Harker is in, he was one of the guys that took me under his wing,” said Harker wrestling coach Karriem Stinson, who co-directed the camp. “He was always positive. He always gave me encouragement and told me, ‘You’re building a great program there, keep going.’”
Each day started with a dynamic warm-up routine that incorporates gymnastics maneuvers such as rolls, flips and hand stands. Students would then practice techniques with the camp coaching staff, work on situational wrestling and play games before breaking for lunch. Each coach at the camp taught something new to the campers each day.
“Each coach [has] an opportunity to show what made us successful as wrestlers and even as coaches,” Lawson said. “And what [campers] have to do is to pick and choose what’s going to work for them.”
For wrestling enthusiast Solin Piearcy, a rising junior at Cupertino High School, the variety of new techniques shown at the camp was one of its biggest pluses. “I love how they bring in a lot of different coaches with different techniques and backgrounds,” she said. “We can pick and choose and learn a variety and put some in our arsenal and make it our own style.”
Leigh High School rising senior Ryan Cummings enjoyed the high quality of instruction provided by the staff. “All the staff are nice and it’s a good program,” he said. “I like the atmosphere that the coaches bring to the room. It makes you want to be there.”
The final two days of the camp were highlighted by visits from Anthony Robles, who spoke to the campers and offered instruction and advice on their techniques. Robles got involved with the camp when Stinson contacted him six months earlier. “The wrestling community, we’re very tight-knit,” he said. “So here I am now, just having fun and trying to give back to the sport that’s given me a lot.”
Since winning the NCAA Championship in 2011, Robles, born with only one leg, has focused on his career as a motivational speaker, though he devotes as much time as possible to the sport he loves. “Wrestling is still my number one passion, and I love being around the sport,” he said.
Robles’ motivation to pass on his knowledge comes from the inspiration he received from his coaches early in his wrestling career. “I remember getting started in the sport, my coach showing me moves or people showing me moves that just clicked, that became part of my style,” he recalled. “And so I just love seeing that on these kids’ faces. I show them some of my favorite moves and see it click for them.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
On Nov. 27, the alumni office sponsored two basketball games in which the varsity and junior varsity boys teams challenged alumni and faculty, respectively. Held in the early evening at the middle school campus, the faculty began the games by shooting a technical foul (which they had gained to make up for all the students’ missing homework) and proceeded to beat the junior varsity team. Then, varsity and alumni tipped off at 7 p.m. in front of a crowd of spectators, with varsity emerging victorious.
Although the exciting games were held over break, 14 alumni who were in town got in on the action while nearly 100 spectators cheered from the stands. A good time was had by all at the inaugural event. To mark the occasion, complimentary T-shirts were handed out and alumni sold snacks to benefit the school’s endowment fund.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Last spring, as track and field season heated up, a funny thing happened: Harker records began to fall en masse. With 2013 now drawing to a close, the cross country team has kept the streak alive, making the past calendar year one for the record books for Harker runners.
It all started in March at the Willow Glen Track and Field Invitational, when Corey Gonzales, now grade 11, topped his own Harker record in the 3,200-meter run by 40 seconds. Isabelle Connell ’13, then a senior, broke her own record in the 200 meter, and Michael Chen ’13 broke his own record in the shot put. A week later, Connell set a new Harker record in the 100 meter, while Julia Wang, now grade 11, set a new shot put record, then posted the second-best mark in Harker history for girls discus. A week after that, Gonzales set a new Harker record in the mile run, Connell set a new Harker record in the 400-meter run, and Sumit Minocha ’13 set a new Harker record in the 100-meter run.
A month later, Cheryl Liu ’13 broke a Harker record in the 100-meter hurdles. Then, three minutes later, Nadia Palte, just a freshman at the time, broke Liu’s record. That same day, Chen broke a Harker record in the discus competition. A few days later, Minocha broke a Harker record in the 100-meter run, and Palte broke her own record in the 100-meter hurdles. At the WBAL championships, Minocha won the 200-meter race, Gonzales won the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter races, Claudia Tischler, now grade 12, won the 1,600-meter race, and Connell won the 100-meter and 200-meter races. A relay team of Tischler, Palte, Connell and Ragini Bhattacharya ’13 also came in first place. Discus throwers Wang and Chen all advanced to CCS.
All told, Harker sent more athletes to CCS and saw more athletes score points at CCS than ever before. Minocha won the CCS championships in the 200-meter run, becoming the first runner in Harker’s history to win an individual CCS championship and the second Harker athlete ever to achieve such a mark. Minocha and Connell became the first athletes in Harker history to qualify for the state meet, and they and Gonzales all set personal records at CCS. Minocha was recognized as athlete of the week by the San Jose Mercury News.
It was an incredible finish to an incredible year. Spring 2013 was a breakthrough season for the program, unlikely to be rivaled. The seniors graduated, and Minocha’s and Connell’s new records were noted in the Harker gym.
When the returning athletes came back to school in the fall, an amazing thing happened: the cross country team picked up right where it left off. Tischler was now the team’s senior statesman, and Gonzales was freshly saddled with new expectations to continue his record-breaking streak. They were joined this year by a new phenom: freshman Niki Iyer.
Running cross country in September, Iyer won the first race of her Harker career. In her next effort, her first varsity race, she ran the best time of any female runner in Harker’s history, coming in second place by a single second. In her next race, she racked up her first varsity win, setting a new school record with one of the 10 best times for a freshman in the course’s 70-year history, an achievement that Harker’s athletic director Dan Molin called “truly elite level.” That race won Iyer athlete of the week recognition from the San Jose Mercury News.
In the first WBAL meet of the year, Gonzales set a new course record, while Iyer won her race and missed out on setting a new course record by, again, a single second. At Baylands, Iyer won another race, beating the previous year’s league champion and setting a new course record. At Crystal Springs, Gonzales and Iyer both set new Harker records. Both runners came in first at the WBAL championships. They and Tischler all qualified for the CCS championships, where Iyer placed third in her race and Gonzales won his, making him the new Division 4 CCS cross country champion. Both qualified for the state meet, where Iyer took seventh and Gonzales finished 85th. See the Eagle Report, page 36, for details.
One of the things that changed Harker’s fortunes was a new head coach. The 2012- 13 school year was the first for Scott Chisam, who had run cross country and track at UCLA, then coached UCLA’s women’s track and field team to two NCAA national championships. All told, Chisam has coached 36 NCAA All-Americans and Olympians, and coached the U.S. women’s cross country team in the 1984 World Cross Country Championships.
“He’s as good as it gets,” says director Molin. “The Chisam name in cross country and track is well known.” The team agrees.
“I really could not have asked for better coaches,” says Gonzales. When Chisam arrived, he took naturally quick runners and made them into smart runners, teaching them techniques to improve their times and their stamina, ensuring that not only would they improve, but improve sustainably.
“It’s amazing how little they knew. They could run fast, but just things like starts, staying near the line on the turn. Just the things that make differences, to the hundreds, to the tenths,” said Chisam.
The team’s success has been contagious. “Last year’s team has been such an inspiration,” says Iyer. “They used to break the records like every week,” she remembers. Iyer, in turn, has inspired her teammates. “She’s more tenacious than any runner I’ve ever seen,” says Gonzales. “Being able to have Niki at practice has made me more tenacious as a runner as well.” He has kind words for Tischler’s leadership, as well. “I’ve always looked up to her,” Gonzales adds. “She’s the real captain on the team. She keeps everyone together. We all look up to Claudia.”
The inspiration of last year’s team, the expertise of Chisam, Gonzales’ ascendance, Tischler’s leadership and Iyer’s sudden emergence have created a great vibe among the runners.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better team this year,” raved Iyer. “The dynamics of our team are just so amazing.” Iyer can recall walking into the gym and gaping at the records set by the team the year before. Now, she is proud to see her name on that list as well. When, at a recent race, an athlete at another school asked Iyer if she’d prefer to be at Simi Valley, one of the state’s top cross country programs, Iyer cut her off mid-sentence. “Once an Eagle, always an Eagle,” was Iyer’s definitive reply.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Girls Volleyball
Junior Varsity B1 (grade 5), coached by Laura Wolfe, went 7-0 and were league champs in the WBAL! MVP: Michelle Ning; Eagle Award: Santoshi Tirumala and Julia Yusupov; Coaches Award: Alexandra Baeckler.
Junior Varsity B2 (grade 5), coached by Miles Brown, went 1-6 overall and took seventh place in the WBAL. MVP: Advika Phadnis, Eagle Award: Pramiti Sankar; Coaches Award: Anika Fuloria.
Intramural (grade 4), coached by Ellie Crane and Vanessa Rios, enjoyed a few months of learning the game of volleyball. Eagle Award: Anishka Raina; Coaches Award: Uma Misha.
Baseball
Junior Varsity B (grade 5), coached by Jon Cvitanich and Joe Mentillo, went 2-2-1 overall. They did not report final league standings due to the grade 5-6 crossover play. MVP: Levi Sutton, grade 5; Eagle Award: Kishan Sood, grade 5; Coaches Award: Eric Zhu, grade 5.
Intramural (grade 4), coached by Jim McGovern and Tobias Wade, enjoyed developing their baseball skills in the spring sunshine. Eagle Award: Jack Hayashi and Arnav Dani; Coaches Award: Kaden Kapadia
Theresa Smith and Karriem Stinson would like to thank all who have supported the Harker lower and sports program over the 2013-14 school year. GO EAGLES!
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Many baseball and softball teams would be blessed to have a trio of aces. Tina Bean and Aaron Bean ’85 have given Harker that many from one family. Their three children – Sarah, Nicolas and Annalyn – are all Harker students, and all pitchers. The eldest is Sarah, a junior. She is also the newest to pitching – or at least to pitching again. When Harker’s softball coaches learned before the start of the season that their expected pitcher would not be able to play, they asked Sarah to step up. “It was completely unexpected that we weren’t going to have a pitcher,” Sarah said. Luckily for the team, however, the coaches knew that Sarah had pitched a bit when she was younger.
A few months before the season began, Sarah started working with the coaches, pitching semiweekly. At practices, the team would simulate pitching in a live game to get her up to speed. “The coaches had faith in me. It has been a huge responsibility, but one that I have been willing to take on because of my love of the team and of the sport,” she said. Last year, the team had the best pitcher in the league, with the most strikeouts. Replacing her would be daunting. “This year, it was such a void that needed to be filled,” Sarah said.
Sarah, her younger brother, Nicolas, grade 9, and their younger sister, Annalyn, grade 3, have grown up with the sport. “We’ve always been a big softball and baseball family,” said Sarah. “As long as I can remember, we’ve always watched the Giants on TV, so as soon as I could start playing softball, I wanted to.” They have also grown up with tremendous encouragement from their parents. “With Dad coaching, and Mom coming to almost every game, it’s a great support base that we have,” said Nicolas. “It feels really good to have everybody out there.”
Nicolas has taken the Harker baseball team by storm. In his first year of high school, playing on the varsity team against the best players – much older players – on other teams, he had the highest batting average on the Eagles, hitting a preposterous .448, while also playing in all 25 of the team’s games and recording by far the most at-bats and plate appearances. His 39 hits and 21 runs scored led the team, as did his .713 slugging percentage.
While Nicolas is the middle child, Sarah says that when it comes to athletics, he’s a model for her. “I look up to him in sports so much,” she said. Nicolas “totally gives himself to the sport.” And, “he’s the best hitter I know.”
On the mound, Nicolas’ 29 innings pitched were fourth-most on the team, and his 31 strikeouts were second-most. That’s meant a lot to the ballclub, but nothing compared to what Sarah’s performance meant to saving the softball squad this year. She pitched 85 of the team’s 92 innings, starting 14 games. With some pitchers from the eighth grade team heading to the upper school next year, Sarah is ready to return to her favorite position: third base.
Sarah and Nicolas grew up not only rooting on for the Giants together, but also playing and working to improve together. “We have always tried to practice together and make each other better,” she said, adding that Nicolas “always complains that we use a softball when we play catch!”
The Beans also have a new pitcher on the way; Annalyn promises to be an asset for Harker one day in her own right. “She is a natural athlete,” said Sarah. “She is crazy athletic.” Sarah stopped by one of Annalyn’s pitching lessons and, shocked by the level of talent she saw, asked Annalyn to promise that she would work to one day play in college. “Even at this young age, she’s showing so much potential – bounds above where I was at that age,” says Sarah. Nicolas sees something else in Annalyn: her spirit. “Annalyn is very hardworking and just enjoys the game,” says Nicolas. “Overall, she just likes having fun out there with her friends, and that’s one of the most important parts of a sport.”
So, will Annalyn play for Harker one day?
“Yeah, for sure,” said Sarah.
Sarah is a more than effective advocate for Harker’s softball team. Though Sarah has played softball all of her life, she talks about falling in love with the sport all over again because of the team at Harker. “We are the strangest group of people ever,” she said, “but we just work for some reason.”
The closeness that she has within her own family translates to her team as well. “It’s a family thing,” she volunteered, “in that everyone on the team is like family. You get so close with the people you’re working with every day. I think that makes you appreciate them more.” For someone who knows what it is like to play the sport with the people she loves, it is a powerful sentiment and a testament to the atmosphere that the Harker coaching staff – led by Raul Rios with assistants Ray Fowler, Dan Hudkins and Rikki Martinez – has created.
“My love for softball comes from my love for the people I am playing with,” said Sarah. Harker’s softball team has given Sarah a new family, and like her actual family, it’s full of hurlers and sluggers, having a great time together. “Having fun – that’s what it’s all about for all of us,” says Nicolas. “The game is fun, and that’s why we want to go back out there.” With Sarah and Nicolas returning to their teams next year, and Annalyn surely on the way, the future looks bright for Harker’s baseball and softball teams, and for the Bean family pitchers.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
The 2014 Eagles varsity basketball squad made school history this winter, overcoming adversity and injuries to shock the league by becoming the first Harker boys team in any sport to reach the section finals. This is their tale.
With only three games left in the league season, Harker was staring down a potential under-.500 year. The team had lost all of its captains to injury at various points in the season and its final games were against top league teams, including two teams vying for first place. A few weeks later, the team had rewritten Harker’s record books. How did the Eagles pull it off?
Early Hopes
When the season began, the Eagles looked like the championship squad it eventually would become. In scrimmages before the start of league play, the team faced off against teams it rarely plays, like powerhouses Gunn and Monta Vista. Harker ambushed Gunn 70-58, led by 16 points and eight rebounds from senior Will Deng and 15 points and seven rebounds from junior Eric Holt. Next, the team stunned Monta Vista, trumping them by 17 points on the back of Holt’s double-double, including a massive 19 rebounds. Harker was on a roll, and the whole team could feel it.
“Starting 2-0 with those as the two wins was very exciting,” coach Butch Keller reported months later. After a summer in which Harker had won the summer league and a fast start before the league season, Harker looked primed to go on a dynamic run.
Adversity Strikes
In the very next game, the adversity began. Harker entered the Lynbrook Tournament and drew Homestead, another top team, in the first game. They were well on their way to handily defeating Homestead, giving them three wins against three powerhouses by at least 10 points each, when captain Holt, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, broke his thumb. Holt was to be out for six to eight weeks. In their next game, Harker was crushed by Mills. “They beat us pretty badly,” recounted Keller. “The loss of Eric threw us into a little tailspin.”
The Road Gets Tougher
After the Lynbrook Tournament, Harker’s next major preseason competition was the Monta Vista Tournament. The team had so far survived the injury to Holt, rattling off a series of wins against beatable teams. Now, in the first game of the tournament, Harker would play Bellarmine, a fearsome team it had never played – and the Eagles’ toughest challenge yet. That’s when, in the final practice before the game, Harker’s all-league starting point guard of the last three years, senior captain Johnny Hughes, rolled his ankle. Bellarmine crushed Harker. The Eagles rebounded in their next game, but lost a heartbreaker in the third game of the tournament by a single point on the last play before the buzzer. It was a rough way to end the preseason, and a tough loss line in the final tune-up before league play began. The road would only get more challenging, however; in the weekend before the very first league game – against Pinewood, the eventual champ – Hughes’ replacement, junior Nicholas Nyugen, hurt his back. Harker would enter league play down three players, including two captains.
Rough Losses and Setbacks
Harker would lose to Pinewood and then to Sacred Heart Prep, starting the league season in an early 0-2 hole. As the team adjusted to the injuries, it rallied off a few wins, then a skid of losses, including to teams it expected to beat. Slowly, Holt, Hughes and Nyugen came back from their injuries, but just as the team had learned to adjust to life without them, they now had to learn how to gel again with the newly restored lineup. “When players come back, you’ve already adjusted, and it takes another adjustment to get used to that,” said Keller. As the season drew to a close, Harker faced a sobering prospect: a best-case scenario fourth-place finish, and a worst-case scenario sixth-place finish. “We were pretty shot,” recalls Keller. “We might end up finishing under .500 for the season.”
That was when the Eagles found themselves with three games left – against three of the top teams in the league: Woodside Priory, Sacred Heart Prep and Pinewood.
The Final Three Games
There was great news, though. For the first time all season, Harker had its whole team back. Against Woodside, the Eagles played like a team rejuvenated, leaping out to a 20-point lead at halftime. That was when injury struck again. The team’s all-league first-team center, Deng, who according to Keller, “put the team on his shoulders” during the most challenging days of the season, tore his ACL. The Eagles had their team whole for only half a game.
Harker finished off its win against Woodside, but the next game would be one of their toughest of the season as the team faced Sacred Heart Prep, a first-place team with only one loss for the year. As Keller would later recall, “nobody remembered the last time Harker beat Sacred Heart.” Now, Harker was to play them without their center, who had started every game for the last two years and was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder.
Deng’s replacement was senior Huck Vaughan, who would go on to have the game of his life in an upset that would shake the league and make the San Jose Mercury News. Vaughan would score 23 points, more than any other player in the game, to lead Harker to a 71-65 stunner and dash Sacred Heart’s hopes for a league title. Suddenly, something special was happening for Harker.
Going into the game, Sacred Heart was tied with Pinewood for the league lead, with each team having only lost once this season. The loss thrust Sacred Heart into second place, but if Harker beat Pinewood – which would have to be an upset as well – Sacred Heart would finish first and potentially play Pinewood for the championship. So Sacred Heart Prep traveled to watch Harker take on Pinewood, and see if maybe, just maybe, they would tie for first. Lo and behold, in the final game of the regular season, still without Deng, Harker entered the second half trailing 29-21, then roared back, outscoring Pinewood 30-16 in the second half and winning 51-45. Harker was on a phenomenal run, and the clubhouse could feel it. “When we walked into the locker room” during this stretch, Holt recalled, “everyone had a smile on their face.”
Now, the CCS seeders had some work to do: Pinewood and Sacred Heart Prep finished tied for first, but Harker was the only team to have beaten them both, and had just laid a beating on Priory. Suddenly, from staring down the barrel of an under-.500 year, Harker had earned a first-round bye.
Big Playoff Wins
Harker’s first playoff game was against Carmel High. Despite what the coach called an “awful matchup without Will,” the team, through sheer tenacity, won the game, catapulting it into the quarterfinals. Now, the boys would travel to Santa Cruz to play Soquel in the massive Kaiser Permanente Arena, home to the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA’s Developmental League.
Though Harker was the sixth seed and Soquel was the third, it was a sure bet that Soquel would not underestimate Harker as two years ago, a seventh-seeded Harker team had knocked out a second-seeded Soquel. Soquel’s star player now, a senior, was a sophomore when that happened and was not going to take Harker lightly.
Soquel jumped out early, building up a double-digit lead. That continued into the fourth quarter, which got off to a rough start for Harker. The coach called a timeout with just over six minutes to go and the team down a dozen points. The message was simple and stark: “You have been on an amazing run and nobody would blame you if it ended here, but I truly believe that we are the better team.” From that point on, Harker went on a 20-2 run, winning by nine. The arena went from rocking to so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Keller noted that that run, in that huge venue, was a highlight of his coaching career he will long remember.
Next up: The semifinals against Seaside, an athletic team with two Division 1 prospects and a deep bench. And while the players might not have underestimated Harker, Seaside’s fans sure did. Keller recalls a Seaside fan spotting two Harker fans in the stands and commending them for appearing while offering his condolences for the beating they were about to witness. “It’s so great of you to come out and support your team,” he is rumored to have said. “It’s going to be a tough afternoon. We’re probably going to score 100 points on you.” Famous last words, as the saying goes. Indeed, Seaside jumped on Harker hard, but just as they had all season, the Eagles rebounded, hitting 10 of 10 free throws down the stretch and winning by 10. The fan was stunned. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Keller recalls him lamenting.
The Season Ends
That game would mark the high point of Harker’s season. In their next game, despite a packed house of Eagles fans, Harker lost to Sacred Heart Prep. Harker had earned its first-ever trip to the section finals and traveled to play one last game, on the road, against the fourth-seeded team in all of Northern California, which it lost. However, the Eagles’ amazing run had rewritten the rules for Harker basketball. If the team, which has many of its players returning, makes it to the section finals again, it will do so with the experience of having already been there once.
For his part, Holt cites veteran leadership and a deep bench as one reason Harker excelled. “This was our first year of having mostly juniors and seniors on the team,” he says. “Their leadership really helped us battle through.” He saw that first-hand after his own injury. “A lot of my teammates were pretty depressed,” he recounted, “but they got over it pretty quickly, because they realized they had the ability to step up and play through it even without me, and I thought they played really well without me.” When pressed on who stepped up in his absence, Holt gives credit to the whole team, saying that “everyone, on every single night, had the ability to play really well,” whether it was junior Sriv Irrinki nailing a number of threes on a tough shooting night for the rest of the team, or senior Wei Wei Buchsteiner’s running up of 20 points.
Harker’s tenacity was particularly exemplified by Deng, who was knocked out late in the season and worked hard with the team’s trainer to finally be able to return for the very last game of the season, and the last of his Harker career, in the section finals. Many players off the bench had to step up from playing less than half the minutes of the game to playing nearly all of them. Throughout it all, one tough bunch of athletes weathered storm after crashing storm, stayed strong in the face of adversity and bonded to write a new page in Harker athletics history.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Girls Volleyball
Varsity A (grades 7-8), coached by Stephanie Coleman and Diana Melen- dez, went 7-2 overall and took third place in the WBAL. MVP: Lauren Napier, grade 8; Eagle Award: Melissa Kwan, grade 8; Coaches Award: Megan Cardosi and Kristen LeBlanc, both grade 8.
Varsity B (grades 7-8), coached by Therese Wunnenberg, went 5-2 overall and took second place in the WBAL. MVP Allison Cartee, grade 7; Eagle Award: Laura Wu, grade 7; Coaches Award: Catherine Wang, grade 7.
Varsity B2 (grades 7-8), coached by Candace Silva-Martin, went 6-0 and were league champs in the WBAL! MVP: Uttara Saha, grade 8; Eagle Award: Danya Zhang, grade 8; Coaches Award: Nicole Selvaggio, grade 7.
Junior Varsity A (grade 6), coached by Vonda Reid, went 6-1 overall and took second place in the WBAL. Eagle Award: Grace Hajjar, Anna Gert and Emily Cheng.
Junior Varsity B6 (grade 6), coached by Alyssa Glascott, went 6-1 overall and were league champs in the WBAL! MVP: Michelle Kwan; Eagle Award: Rashmi Iyer; Coaches Award: Annabelle Ju.
Baseball
Varsity A (grades 7-8), coached by Jeff Paul, Matt Arensberg and Carl Yaffe, went 1-4-1 overall and took fifth place in the WBAL. MVP: Chris Smith, grade 8; Eagle Award: Zach Hoffman, grade 7; Coaches Award: Tanay Kamat, grade 8.
Junior Varsity A (grades 6-7), coached by Dan Pringle, Gustavo Cordova and Joe Newman, went 1-5-1 overall and took sixth place in the WBAL. MVP: Logan Frank, grade 7; Eagle Award: Jack Dawson, grade 7 and Asmit Kumar, grade 6; Coaches Award: Henry Cuningham, grade 6 and Trevor Thompson, grade 7.
Boys Volleyball
Varsity A (grades 7-8), coached by Pete Anderson, went 8-1 overall and were league champs of the ADAL – their second league championship in a row! MVP: Derek Jones, grade 8 and Chris Gong, grade 7; Eagle Award: Jeffrey Kwan, grade 6.
Junior Varsity A (grades 6-7), coached by Travis Jones, went 5-4 overall and took second place in the ADAL. MVP: Rahul Goyal, grade 7; Eagle Award: Henry Wiese, grade 6; Coaches Award: Neal Sidhu, grade 6.
Tennis
Varsity A (grades 6-8), coached by John Fruttero and JP Fruttero, went 7-0 and were league champs of the WBAL! They also went 5-0 and were league champs of the MTP! They finished 15-1 overall, winning the WBAL tournament and taking second place in the MTP tournament. MVP: Brandon Mo, grade 8, Neil Ramaswamy, grade 7 and Joshua Valluru, grade 6; Eagle Award: Neil Bai and David Wen, both grade 8; Coaches Award: Elizabeth Schick, grade 8.
Varsity B (grades 6-8), coached by John Fruttero and JP Fruttero. All matches were exhibition matches and, therefore, were not scored. MVP: Jerry Chen, grade 8; Eagle Award: Alex Wang, grade 8.
Water Polo
Varsity B (grades 6-8), coached by Ted Ujifusa and Peter Blume, went 6-0 and were league champs of the WBAL, becoming the first Harker middle school water polo team to win a league title! MVP: Emma Brezoczky, grade 8; Eagle Award: Bobby Bloomquist, grade 7; Coaches Award: Cassandra Ruedy and Alicia Xu, both grade 6.
Golf
Middle School (grades 6-8), coached by Ie-Chen Cheng, shot a 180 (top five golfers’ scores) and were league champs of the WBAL spring golf tournament! This is the middle school golf team’s fifth WBAL league title in a row in the last three years (they play fall and spring each year)!
Theresa Smith and Karriem Stinson would like to thank all who have supported the Harker middle school sports program over the 2013-14 school year. GO EAGLES!
This article originally appeared in the summer 2014 Harker Quarterly.
What a spring for Harker sports! Harker’s hard-working athletes excelled on the field this spring, with amazing streaks, playoff competition and some jaw-dropping results! On the academic front, Harker had 10 – count ’em, 10! – top five varsity spring 2014 CCS scholastic championship teams. Those 10 teams had the highest collective grade-point average of all teams competing in their sport. Harker’s teams finished in the top five for every spring sport in which we field a team, an amazing accomplishment. Together, the athletic and academic accomplishments are a strong testament to Harker’s ability to foster highly competitive athletes and great minds!
What a spring for Harker sports! Harker’s hard-working athletes excelled on the field this spring, with amazing streaks, playoff competition and some jaw-dropping results! On the academic front, Harker had 10 – count ’em, 10! – top five varsity spring 2014 CCS scholastic championship teams. Those 10 teams had the highest collective grade-point average of all teams competing in their sport. Harker’s teams finished in the top five for every spring sport in which we field a team, an amazing accomplishment. Together, the athletic and academic accomplishments are a strong testament to Harker’s ability to foster highly competitive athletes and great minds!
Golf The boys varsity golfers had a historic run this year, finishing third in the CCS regional tournament and sixth in their first-ever appearance in the CCS championships, ahead of league-rival Sacred Heart Prep! The future of Harker golf looks exceptionally bright as well, as the entire boys team will return next year, and the middle school golf team won its fifth consecutive WBAL tournament! Golfer Shrish Dwivedi, grade 11, was among the athletes who best exemplified the combination of athletic and academic achievement. After becoming co-league MVP, Dwivedi traveled to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to compete in the Future Collegians World Tour (FCWT) Championship, where he brought home a top three finish trophy in an international field of about 140 players, was named to the FCWT All-Academic Team and was awarded the First Team All-FCWT Award, becoming the only male to receive both academic and athletic honors.
Track and Field The track and field team competed in the league finals on May 17, where freshman phenom Niki Iyer became the new league champion in both the 1,600m and 3,200m runs! Meanwhile, senior Wei Wei Buchsteiner became the league champion in the high jump, setting a new Harker record of 5’9” – a foot better than the previous record. At the junior varsity championships, freshman Davis Dunaway won four events, while freshman Misha Ivkov placed in the top six in four events en route to the JV boys winning the team championship! These performances catapulted Harker’s athletes into the CCS preliminaries, where Iyer finished second and set a new Harker record.
In late-breaking news, Iyer placed fifth overall in the CCS 3,200m run, breaking her own week-old school record with a time of 10:51.14!
Swimming The swim team qualified for all CCS relays and sent a solid half of its swimmers and divers to the championships!
In a late-breaking update we are glad to report junior Aaron Huang made CCS finals, placing 14th in the 200 IM and 12th in the 100 breaststroke; senior Kimberly Ma placed 14th in the 500 freestyle and junior Stacey Chao placed 35th out of 51 1-meter divers.
Volleyball The boys went 20-14 this season, reaching the CCS quarterfinals after crushing Sobrato in their first-round matchup in straight sets. The team averaged 10 kills and 11.7 digs per set on the year, while also racking up 121 aces and 157 total blocks in its 34 games. Senior Andrew Zhu led the team in kills per set with 3.7, while junior Matt Ho led the team in kill percentage (59.7 percent) among players who played more than 50 sets. Zhu also led the team with 33 aces and an ace percentage of 13.2. Senior Will Deng led the team with 48 blocks.
The future of Harker volleyball looks bright as well, as the middle school squad won 53 of 54 games over the past three years, including winning the last 35 straight!
Baseball It was a rebuilding year for the team as the young squad faced off against varsity competition and finished 3-22 overall and 0-12 in league. As a whole, the team hit .248 with an excellent .355 on base percentage but a less-than-optimal .318 slugging percentage. In 25 games, the team scored 112 runs and hit 32 doubles, four triples and two homers. The speedsters also stole 62 bases, and were only thrown out three times all year! Pitching will be a key area of improvement for the team next year, as it finished with a 9.09 earned run average in 156 1/3 innings pitched.
Softball The softball team also is in the midst of a rebuilding year, going 1-15 and 0-8 in league. Overall, the team hit .238 with a .352 on base percentage and .298 slugging percentage for a total .650 on base plus slugging. The team also scored 90 runs with the help of 15 doubles, three triples and a homer. On the mound, the team finished with an 8.52 earned run average in 92 innings pitched.
Lacrosse The girls finished in second place in league this year with a 5-3 record, ending the year by avenging an earlier loss to Sacred Heart Prep with a 13-7 trumping.
Tennis Big news in middle school tennis! Harker’s varsity A team, comprising students in grades 6-8, went 20-0 this year and swept both the public and private league championships! That makes this the first time the team has ever gone undefeated and the first time it has won both titles. Winning, however, is not new to these players; the team is 36-2 over the past two years and has won three of the last four division titles!
This year’s sports season is behind us, but the honors continue to rain down, as both a Harker team and a recent grad were commended in the press this week.
Golf
Harker’s male golfers had the highest GPA of any boys golf team in the state of California this year! Last week, the California Interscholastic Federation announced its 2013-14 Academic Team Champions, honoring the high school teams with the highest GPAs in the state. For boys golf, the honor went to Harker’s squad. Congratulations to the team on this outstanding achievement!
Volleyball
The San Jose Mercury News named its top volleyball players last week, and 2014 Harker alum Andrew Zhu was awarded an Honorable Mention. Zhu is heading to New York University to continue his volleyball career!
When his final putt dropped, “I wasn’t sure where I stood with regard to the cut line,” said McNealy, but when I got to the scoring table and saw that I was two shots inside the projected cut with nobody who could realistically pass me, it hit me that I was going to be playing in the US Open.”
In an interview with the Northern California Golf Association, McNealy said about qualifying, “It’s awesome. It’s a great day. It’s something I’ve wanted to do my whole life. It’s still sinking in.”
Maverick will have his secret weapon along for the U.S. Open, too. “I am excited to have my dad caddying for me that week, and my three brothers (Scout, grade 7; Colt, grade 9; Dakota, grade 10) and mom will also be there cheering me on from the grandstands!”
At Stanford, McNealy was named to the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team and received an All-Pac-12 honorable mention. In his career at Harker, he twice earned the WBAL individual championship and was named to the WBAL All-League first team three times. McNealy is the Harker record holder for lowest nine-hole match score (-6) and most matches as medalist (nine of 10).
He noted, “at Harker I figured out that I wanted to pursue both golf and my academics seriously; hence, it was a pretty easy decision to choose Stanford. I plan on majoring in management science and engineering with a minor in computer science.”
In a 2013 Harker Quarterly article on Harker athletes playing in college, McNealy noted he was learning the game when he was learning how to walk and “loved to go outside and whack balls around with a plastic club.” Arriving at Harker in grade 9, McNealy immediately excelled on the links, but he believes that “until I shoot 18 in every round, there will always be room to get better.”
Given that drive, it is no wonder that McNealy is acutely aware of the life lessons golf provides: “Golf, to me, is the ultimate game of personal responsibility,” he said. “Your performance is a direct result of the time and effort you put into the game, and you take complete responsibility for your play. If you hit a bad shot, you can only blame yourself because you were the only one to swing the club. Conversely, if you make a hole in one, you can take complete pride in your accomplishment.”