Busy summer for CCS athletes
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Many of the Christchurch School athletes and coaches have been logging miles in preparation for the upcoming 2010-11 seasons.
Replacing All-American defenseman Collin Brooke (Quinnipiac University) and Academic All-American goalie Justin Ashby (Randolph College) will be hard for CCS lacrosse coach Vince Smith. That has not slowed him down.
Smith has coached four major lacrosse camps already, and accompanied star midfielder Pat Young to the Under Armour National All-American Underclassmen Tournament in Baltimore, where the rising junior represented his home state of New Jersey in a fourth place finish. Young is being actively recruited by national powers Virginia and North Carolina. Senior Alex Sparrow attended the Top 205 Camp at the University of Maryland, as did sophomore face-off man Pat Ingram.
In volleyball, 2010 Christchurch graduate Chilli Childress is hard at work preparing for her first season as a scholarship winner on the Eastern Mennonite University Volleyball squad. Childress is one of just two freshmen joining the program at EMU.
In basketball, junior James Ford received a verbal scholarship offer from Georgia State University while playing on the road for the Richmond Squires, an elite AAU basketball program. Also on the road for Coach Ben Thompson are juniors Manny Wallace and Barrington Alston, both hot prospects for area colleges. They will be joined this fall by new faces Jamie Wilson, Jordan Wallace and Will Smith. Wallace and Smith are basketball-football double threats. Replacing starter Robert Lawson (Hampden-Sydney) should prove an attainable task for Thompson, who returns the majority of his team.
The baseball graduates are also working hard. 2010 graduates Justin Hale (Ferrum) of Wake and Nick Przybyl (Clemson) of Christchurch are both preparing for their freshman seasons in the college ranks. But coach Jon Waite welcomes back a solid core of players, including seniors Travis Myers and Michael Taylor of Urbanna
Soccer coach Matt Schaefer and his team are set to return to the pitch to defend their 2010 state title with VISSA all-state seniors Alec Faulkner and Sparrow in leadership roles. 2009 captain Jared Bouis is headed to Randolph-Macon while James Conway will walk on at George Washington. CCS valedictorian and soccer star Libby Randolph is busily preparing for her freshman season on the women’s team at Denison University.
Junior Earl Rimbey will be traveling the farthest of all this summer. As part of an elite U18 soccer team, the USA Galaxy, representing the United States, Rimbey is in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the World Youth Cup tournament. The “Gothia Cup” is the world’s largest amateur soccer tournament and has 71 countries involved.
Rimbey is part of an all-star squad representing the United States. Although only a junior, he is a crucial leader on the CCS squad. Rimbey scored the insurance goal for Christchurch in the waning moments of the 2009 State Championship to seal the deal of the Seahorses’ state title.
The gridiron gang has been on the road since June 5, where senior captains Cool Battle, Taylor Byrd and Andy Snow led juniors Carlos Gray and Win Homer on a football camp tour of UVa, UNC, and NC State. Homer then made a solo trip to Boston College for a one-day camp where head coach Frank Spaziani offered him a spot on the 2012 squad as an offensive lineman. Junior linebacker Jeff Wilson then joined Snow and Homer on their camp trip to the University of Maryland, where all performed well.
Byrd, a quarterback at Christchurch School, recently participated in the “Top Gun” football camp in Williamsburg, one of the premier football camps in the country.
Byrd has had a busy summer with recruiting visits to Virginia, N.C. State, North Carolina, Princeton, CNU, and Washington & Lee University.
Byrd also attended an invitation-only camp in Annapolis, Md., called Football University. Football University is run by the same people who put on the Army All-American Game. It was at this camp that Taylor was one of two selected out of 40 varsity QBs to attend Top Gun, which attracted players from all over the U.S. and Canada.
Homer made his one-day camp performance pay off in Blacksburg on July 10. When the camp ended, Homer was taken to a private meeting with head coach Frank Beamer and came away with his third verbal scholarship offer (he received a verbal offer from UVa back in May).
A 6’1”, 230-lb. linebacker, Wilson accepted an invitation from the staff at Auburn University and attended its one-day camp on July 17.
Replacing three seniors headed off to play college football will be a challenge for coach Ed Homer. David Brackett (Kenyon College), Shane Jones (University of Texas San Antonio) Josh Lovell (Marshall University), and Collin Brooke all played on both sides of the ball and so the Seahorses will have their work cut out for them.
The addition of Barron Lawson of Water View and Ryan and Brian Ransom of Gloucester will definitely help line play, while Wallace and Smith will join receivers and defensive backs. Fall preseason practice begins on August 15.