By Bruce Karnick

[email protected]

High school sports have a key element that fans need to keep in perspective, the competitions are called ‘academic based athletics. The emphasis being on the academic end and although wins and losses for the competitions are tracked, another, more important aspect is tracked as well, academics.

Academic Awards The various coaches’ associations issue awards for ‘Academic All-State’ both for teams and individuals. Academic all-state is based on GPA. Gold is normally the top of the class with silver being the next tier. There are other considerations included, but each sport may be slightly different. One key factor many of the associations consider is the player cannot have any eligibility penalties or infractions in their high school career.

This fall, 361 students participated in seven different sports. Football, Soccer (boys and girls), Girls Swimming and Diving, Girls Tennis, Volleyball. Thos 361 students averaged a 3.55 GPA and a multi-sport athlete rate of 53% Girls Swim and Dive was the undefeated MEC Champions; their seventh consecutive MEC title and fourth as an undefeated team.

Girls Swim and Dive advanced swimmers to the finals in all 12 events in the Section 3AA final including sending several individuals and all three relays to state.

Girls Tennis earned the #2 seed of 16 teams in the section and played host to a quarterfinal round.

Football also earned the #2 seed in the section finishing as the section runner-up.

Head Coach Dana Strain was named the Suburban Maroon District Coach of the Year.

The Raider football team received academic gold in the Class 5A group. The team GPA was the second highest in the class at 3.38, just behind Alexandria Area High School who had a 3.43.

All-District 1st Team: #1 Brenden Freiermuth, #5 John Chorlton, #7 Axel Arnold, #10 Johnny Bezdicek, #11 Stephen Reifenberger, #50 Ben Witt All-District Honorable Mention: #6 Rico Cooper, #24 Tom Kennedy, #26 Austin Leflay, #28 Ben Clemens Girls’ soccer The girls’ soccer team won the academic silver award for a team GPA between 3.5 and 3.75.

Bella Meier finished her HHS career as the girls soccer all time leading scorer.

Volleyball The volleyball team earned an academic silver award for a team GPA between 3.5 and 3.75 Tyler Bushinski earned Academic All-State in Cross Country.

Each team had a partner sport they supported directly. This cool new tradition had players and coaches from one sport attend the other sport as a large group. Football/ Soccer, Cross Country/ Girls Swim, Volleyball/Girls tennis. The feedback from students on this was awesome. They loved going to cheer on and to be cheered on by their classmates and it made the games that much more enjoyable for all.

Congratulations to all of our Raider athletes for their accomplishments in the classroom along with their activities.