Great year for Saint Francis Athletes
By Michael Chu
Going from the different shades of blue to everyone wearing carolina blue and from female athletes shouting Troubadours to the sounds of male and females yelling SAINTS are just a few of the many changes that have transpired this year.
In the spring of 2009 Mr. Sol Batoon became the Athletic Director. His first goal was to develop a very supportive and caring staff. From the interview process to a two day workshop in June the new staff was ready to move forward.
Girls volleyball, under the guidance of Mrs. Sonja Samsonas, came one game away from qualifying for the State Tournament. Our junior varsity and intermediate teams contended for the championships in their respective divisions.
Our girls cross country team, led by coach Ray Guinto, qualified two girls for the state cross country meet. We even had our first male cross country runner in the intermediate division.
We also had girls intermediate and junior varsity tennis teams, girls bowling and for the very first time we had our own competitive cheerleading squad. Mrs. Rona Funtanilla entered junior varsity & intermediate teams in various competitions. We competed with the large ILH schools and did very well in our first year.
Girls canoe paddling, girls soccer, and girls and boys basketball highlighted the winter season. Mrs. Indhira Lynton, our varsity coach, came within a game of going to the state tournament. Mr. Batoon guided our boys, who moved from intermediate to junior varsity basketball in just their second year of existence. The boys gave a very good accounting of themselves and finished in the middle of the pact of large schools.
In the spring Mr. David Mau, our golf coach, had boys and girls teams in various divisions. Mr. Keone Batoon had a strong intermediate boys track team and also had some outstanding female tracksters. The dean of Saint Francis coaches, Mr. Mark Glushenko, took our varsity softball team to California to play in the Nike Best of the West Tournament. There were 32 teams from all over the United States. The highlight of the spring was our first baseball team. Mr. Dale Zuttermeister worked extremely hard with our boys and one girl on the team and guided our intermediate team into the championship game and falling just short.
All the above were our own Saint Francis teams. We participated with Pac-5 in wrestling, judo and swimming and intermediate football. We had 13 of our young men participate in football. The team finished in second place. We will be continuing all our programs from this year and adding a few more.
For the upcoming school year the Saints will have boys varsity basketball division II, boys varsity baseball division II, girls varsity cheerleading and some of our young male athletes will be playing varsity football for Pac-5. We had a great year with the greatest number of student-athletes in our history.
GO SAINTS GO!!
