Springing into the athletics season with character and growth
Spring sports are underway marking the turning of seasons. While winter offers just two sports, boys and girls basketball, spring brings seven different programs for Overlake’s athletes. As a result, Director of Athletics, John Wiley says, “Spring has become the strongest time of year for the Upper School!” Last year the spring sports programs had an awesome season bringing home state titles in 4 different sports, but what will this year bring?
While winning titles is great, Wiley is quick to point out that there’s much more to high school sports than winning championships. Before the start of the season, athletics piloted a new idea that had been churning for several years and held a Coaches and Team Leaders Workshop. All coaches and any student who saw themselves as a leader gathered together before the start of the season to come up with values they wanted their team to take to heart throughout the season. Values like accountability, growth, resilience, integrity, respect, and gratitude. Each team got together and came up with their own set of values, spent time defining what they mean and why they were important, and ultimately created a team covenant to take with them through the season.
“How often do we talk about what something like resilience is? Do they kids know what that means? At the end of the day, if they hit a jump shot or score a goal that’s great, but if they learn how to be resilient or how to connect with their teammates, that’s the stuff that matters. That’s character education,” Wiley says.
You can see just one example of what the girls golf team has adopted as their guiding principles for the season here. With these guiding values in mind, we are excited to see what blossoms from each program this spring.
Boys Soccer is looking forward to a great season after last year’s state win under the coaching of Scott Lane who has coached at all levels from 5th grade all the way to Varsity at Overlake. “He has a calming nature about him and is great at helping athletes play selflessly,” Wiley says. “He’s special and his teams are special.”
Girls Golf soared to success last spring bringing home multiple state titles and has several young returning athletes that they are excited to see grow the program. But their coaches always want to stress the importance of staying in the moment. “It’s gonna be a good season, but they take it one match at a time,” Wiley shares.
Baseball also brought home a state title last year with a young team including an all freshmen outfield that is returning this year. Overlake combines with Bear Creek, our neighbors up the hill, to field an awesome baseball team under the leadership of Mike Davidson, Middle School Head and long-time Baseball coach. “Mike is an amazing coach, the kids respect him and a lot of alums come back and want to be a part of this program,” Wiley notes. This year the team has welcomed alums Michael Andrea (’12), and Ryan Eldridge (’18) as assistant coaches this year and Wiley shares how great it is to see the community support for the baseball program.
Girls Tennis also brought home state titles last spring and has a lot of great players this year. But Wiley feels that the best part is that these athletes want to be a part of a team no matter what their individual tennis involvement might be outside Overlake. They just love being a part of a team. Even Experiential Education Coordinator Zeya Kyaw is joining the JV team as a coach this year expanding the number of staff members who also coach.
Girls Lacrosse welcomed a new coach this year in Olivia McCarey. McCarey played lacrosse at UW and has been coaching at the club level prior to coming to Overlake. Wiley has already observed, “she holds a high standard, but they are already getting a lot out of it.” Overlake is the smallest school in the state that plays girls lacrosse and just recently went up against the largest high school in the state, Mt. Tahoma. While they may have lost the match 6-9, as Wiley points out, this team is not to be underestimated. “They’re going to compete. They have a lot of girls who are really bought in.”
Boys Lacrosse graduated 13 seniors last year, but that has not deterred returning coach and alum, Colton Umberger (’14). Umberger has already spent the year recruiting new athletes to come out for the team. He even approached students who had never picked up a lacrosse stick and pointed out that skills they already have from playing sports like basketball would actually transfer very well to lacrosse, helping students step outside their comfort zones to try a new sport. “Suddenly these basketball machines in the winter have lacrosse sticks in their hands in the spring,” Wiley exclaims. “Kids are playing lacrosse for the first time ever.” Even Assistant Director of Facilities, and former high school lacrosse player, Ben Ramage joined the program as an assistant coach.
Girls Ultimate was a mostly freshmen team last year but they are looking forward to growing the program this year with enthusiasm and energy under head coaches Ben Ostman and Ash Gilbert with help from assistant coach and alum, Krystal Barghelame (’04). Barghelame was a three-sport athlete in soccer, basketball, and tennis, when she was an Overlake student, however, Ultimate was not offered at the time. But she went on to play Ultimate at Stanford and has brought back her enthusiasm to coach at Overlake. We love welcoming our alums come back to the nest!
Whatever the final score, the spring is shaping up to be a lively and exciting season for our athletics programs. “It’s great to talk about winning championships, but that’s not why we do it. We do it for the bigger stuff,” Wiley shares. “We’re not chasing end results and banners, we’re trying to have kids chase character.”
He went on to say, “you can still get a ton out of sports win or lose. If you have the right people around you, teammates and coaches. Even if a team doesn’t even go 500 for their record but they’re playing other powerhouse schools, those wins over really big schools take a lot of character. Those kids will leave that program knowing ‘if I really work and try to grow, maybe that teamwork will pay off in the future on a software team, construction team, or a surgical team’. I want them to learn all the things that went into that. If we can deliver these values, it really doesn’t matter what our record is. Our kids are going to learn a ton.”