The West Catholic Athletics League (WCAL) is a long-standing institution of high school competition. After facing many challenges these past few years relating to high school athletics being shut down due to the pandemic, the WCAL is bouncing back better than ever with one main goal: sportsmanship.
The WCAL is taking many steps to ensure that its athletes will practice sportsmanship on and off the field. One main action is the hosting of the WCAL Sportsmanship Summits. In each season, representatives from all WCAL sports teams and student councils gather to collaborate with their respective sports and organizations, work together to find common ground and brainstorm solutions to potential issues in WCAL sports play.
In August, SHC sent representatives from girls volleyball, football, girls golf, cross country, girls tennis, and student council. These representatives had a blast meeting new people, talking about their programs, and improving the WCAL for everyone. All teams demonstrated "camaraderie and mutual respect" stated Luke Moore '24, a representative from the SHC Men's Cross Country team. Moore enjoyed meeting the cross country runners from other schools that he raced against in the past. The representatives from student council had a particularly important job to do at the summit. They had to discuss the issue of good sportsmanship in the student cheering section. Roisin Gaffney '23, an SHC spirit representative, said that they discussed "'respect and choosing positivity. We have been working hard to implement this into our SHC cheering section." SHC's cheering section this year has been a huge success thanks to the efforts of Gaffney, her fellow spirit commissioner, Jay Murphy '23, and Go Big Green organizer Mia Franceschi '23. The success of the Summits lives on in the connections made and bonds formed.
WCAL Commissioner Jolene Fugate spoke about the summits in this way, "We believe high school sports can instill character, sportsmanship, ethics and integrity. We are working in cooperation with the CIF (state) and CCS (section) leadership on the sportsmanship initiative #BeTheChange. The expansion of our WCAL summit from a single fall meeting into three distinct events reflects our desire to engage student athletes and leaders in meaningful discussion leading into their season of sport."
The WCAL Winter Sports Summit was held on November 16 and continued building camaraderie and connections between athletes to make for a stronger, better West Catholic Athletics League.
Good luck to all winter teams! Go WCAL and GO IRISH!
