Girls Cross Country
With the girls cross country season already underway, team members feel that the group’s connection will only add to their success.
“This season, we have 25 freshmen and sophomores, so this only adds to our depth as a team,” said Claire Gartner, junior. “It is really nice to see this many underclassmen come out to join us.”
According to Gartner, the team’s dynamic will be an important part of the season.
“[A goal for the season is] just running fast,” Gartner said. “I think the team will be really fun this year so I just want to enjoy all the fun meets and practices.”
Gartner says that team bonding activities have helped bring the group together.
“We are very close this year,” Gartner said. “We have done two sunrise runs and we did a pool day. In the fall we do a pumpkin patch day and I think the team is definitely bonded because all the freshmen have already made friends and feel comfortable with us.”
Head coach Gina Schindel is also anticipating a good rest of the season.
“I’m feeling great,” Schindel said. “We have a strong team, we have strong traditions, [and] our leaders are doing a great job.”
According to Schindel, summer running practices are a major part of the group’s success.
“The girls put in the work this summer,” Schindel said. “Any given day if you saw a group of girls running it was 15 to 20 of them. They are working hard, and they make it fun.”
Schindel also noted the variety of skill levels in the athletes, adding that all members are welcome, regardless of skill or ability.
“We have girls in a wide range of times,” Schindel said. “A lot of coaches will just cut it off – ‘you don’t run a nine minute mile pace, well, you’re too slow’ – but we have girls who run any pace. I’m hoping we get more girls who maybe do not want to race so much but do it anyway, and come out and make it a little more fun.”
Schindel says that the most rewarding part of coaching the team is the connections she makes.
“I [enjoy] just getting to connect with families in the community, and getting to know the girls and seeing them grow and improve,” Schindel said. “If they have a great day, be there to support them, and be supportive even if it is not a great day.”
Varsity Soccer Season Opening
The boys soccer team started off with a bang. As of September 8, neither team has lost a game, with JV going 4/0 and varsity going 4/0/1, tying one game.
Matteo Marta, a freshman on varsity, got subbed in during the second half of the first game of the season. Towards the end of the game he was fouled. Off that foul he scored a game-winning penalty kick, forcing a mercy rule. According to Marta, expectations are high for the upcoming season.
“I want to set [the standard] pretty high so I can just work hard, try to get up there,” Marta said.
Varsity team member Mason Bolliger, freshman, also had a dynamic start to the season, subbing in when it was still early on in the game. Since then, he has gotten consistent play time. One of his strengths as a defender is controlling the left lane of the field.
Bolliger says he is getting a feel for the game and team, noting that the team seems to be faring well.
“I think we’ve got a good shot at state,” Bolliger said. “I mean we’re 2/0/1 right now, which is pretty good.”
The team has been practicing and playing for some time, striving to improve their dynamic and chemistry on and off the field.
“We just have to work with our chemistry, we’ve got to pass the ball and know each player’s strengths with the team, if each player’s fast or not and how far ahead to play a ball,” Marta said. “And just try to keep possession and play as a team and we’ll probably make it far in the season, make it to the playoffs.”
Head Coach Kyle Konkol noted the strengths of the team’s upperclassmen.
“We’ve got a lot of great leaders, junior and senior leaders that have spent a lot of time over the summer getting everyone out to the field and playing, which has helped start off our season great,” Konkol said.
This season is Konkol’s tenth year coaching the Shorewood soccer program. According to Konkol, hopes are high this year.
“This year we have a lot of players coming back, and I think we’re excited to take the next step with this group,” Konkol said. “We felt like we had more games to play last year and we lost in a shoot-out to New Berlin Eisenhower.”
Adding to their momentum, Konkol says how they feel more confident now compared to their position later on last season.
“At the playoffs I think we were really finding our groove in the last half of the last season and we’re continuing that right now, so I feel like that’s putting us in a good position for the start of the season,” Konkol said.
Girls Tennis
This year, the girls tennis team is getting into the swing of things as they compete in the first few matches of the season.
“We’ve done really well,” said Jesse Perez, coach of both the girls and boys tennis teams. “I’d say we are about 50/50 at this point, [and] I think the best is still to come, because usually the hardest part of our season is the beginning.”
As they progress through their matches, the team is looking to improve on some key faults from last year.
“We had a lot of players who were just struggling to find their own identity, struggling to really focus on tennis,” Perez said. “This year, the focus has been on a whole [new] level. I think that players are able to both [have] fun and [get] to know one another while also working really hard towards our goals.”
When it comes to matches, this year’s team is aiming high.
“Our goal for the season is to hopefully win conference,” Perez said. “[And] to try and get at least two flights to state.”
Although expectations are high, Perez says the team atmosphere is better than ever.
“The team dynamic is amazing,” Perez said. “We have about thirteen seniors on the team this year, so it’s a lot of players who have played a lot of years together. They’ve really built a community together.”
For players, the start of the season is a great time to find new areas of their individual game to improve on.
“I want to improve my serve, and I want to win more matches”, said Laila Zietlow Leandro, sophomore.
In addition to finding areas of improvement, players can also look back to the previous season to learn how they have grown.
“I can hit the ball more frequently,” Zietlow Leandro said. “[Also], my volleys have improved a lot.”
Dive Team
This year, the Shorewood High School Dive Team is returning for its second season after nearly 40 years. Although the team only has two members, junior Sophie Hanna and sophomore Savannah Rauen, are diving into this fall ready for action.
“Last year two SHS students, seniors from the class of 2024, lobbied to bring diving back to Shorewood,” said Kristen Fraser, diving coach.
Fraser has also been coaching the SHS gymnastics program for 10 seasons. The two sports often overlap, as many dives utilize similar flipping techniques to the ones gymnasts are accustomed to.
“Both Sophie Hanna and Savannah Rauen are also gymnasts, so their transition to diving is a bit easier than someone who doesn’t understand how to twist or flip in the air,” Fraser said. “It is different in many ways from gymnastics, but I use a lot of what I know about body mechanics and position to coach diving.”
Fraser explains that coaching the team will not be her first stint in the diving world.
“I dove for fun in high school, so when the girls were looking to start the diving team last year, they asked if I could coach,” Fraser said. “I was excited to revisit the world of diving.”
Under her guidance, the team is steadily improving.
“This year, we started right when the swimmers started their season, and the girls are diving so well,” Fraser said.
Sophie Hanna is returning to this season with more knowledge and experience.
“It’s definitely been going a lot better than last year since we didn’t start a month late,” Hanna said. “We’ve been progressing with our new dives pretty quickly… which has been fun and really motivating.”
Savannah Rauen joined the team this year.
“It was definitely confusing at first, but I’ve learned a lot of things pretty quickly, which is really nice,” Rauen said.
The season’s progress has been marked by both achievements and challenges.
“There’s two kinds of meets,” Hanna said. “There’s dual meets, or meets with the swim team, which are usually duals or tris. Most of the time, they don’t have divers, so those are normally home meets as well. We just go to our pool, start the competition with just us diving, and since they don’t have divers, we just get scored and then we win the dive part of the meet.”
The dive invites, however, provide a more intense level of competition.
“There’s another type, which is dive invites, which is just like solely divers, so no swimmers,” Hanna said. “In the dual meets, there are only six dives, but in the invites, there’s eleven. There’s rounds of competition—first, we do six dives, then we get scored. If we earn a top spot, we move on to the next round, and if we do well, we keep advancing.”
For those larger meets, the team does a routine in order to prepare.
“We run through all of our dives and then each meet there’s like a different voluntary dive, which is not actually voluntary,” Hanna said. “It’s basically the required dive, so we have to make sure we have that every competition.”
Although the competitions showcase the athletes in the spotlight, they do a lot of work behind the scenes in order to prepare.
“I would say [the practices] are pretty good since there are only two of us,” Rauen said. “It’s really easy to go through different drills and dives really fast, and I think that helps us progress quicker because we don’t have to wait in line for many people since we only have one diving board.”
Despite the small number of participants, the two divers have been able to create a compelling and close-knit environment between them and Coach Fraser.
“I would say [the dynamic] is pretty good, there are only two of us, so it was really easy to bond really quickly, and it’s really great,” Rauen said.
There isn’t a long wait for the diving board at practice, but the Shorewood pool does have other members to take into consideration.
“We also did some team bonding stuff with the swim team, since we are technically a team with them, and it’s better this year because last year we started really late and they didn’t even know that we were a thing, and this year we all kind of got to know each other a little more,” Hanna said.
One of the biggest goals for the team members is a difficult dive maneuver.
“We are looking forward to mastering a few more new dives, like the reverse,” Fraser said. “It’s a scary dive when you have to come backwards toward the diving board behind you, but I really believe these girls will do it by the end of the season.”
The team members reciprocate this goal.
One difficult dive the team aims to learn is the reverse backflip dive.
“It’s basically a gainer but prettier and that’s one of the required dives as well so we are hoping to get that soon [in time for] our conference,” Hanna said.
The team’s hard work and dedication is preparing them for their biggest and most competitive event of their season: the conference meet.
“[Conference] is basically the last meet we will do, and there’s sectionals and state, but we’re not at the level to be doing that yet since we are such a newly established team,” Hanna said.