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Three years in, Carrboro High hits a winning stride

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Staff

Beth Mechum
Staff Writer

An atmosphere of success has taken hold on the Carrboro High School campus.

The field hockey team now plays more competitively with both East Chapel Hill and Chapel Hill, the women’s golf team helped start a high school women’s golf league in the area and the men’s soccer team beat conference rival Cedar Ridge for the first time ever.

Students, teachers and parents walked the halls and fields of Carrboro High School three years ago not knowing what was ahead. It was tough going in the beginning, and it’s still no easy ride. But with cohesion, camaraderie and a sense of community from all, things just keep getting better.

Three years ago, in the school’s first year of operation, the football team couldn’t as much as sniff a win, even when at home on its brand-new field. Fortunately, there weren’t many people in the stands to witness those weekly beatings. A full women’s golf team was just a pie-in-the-sky dream for the few golf enthusiasts on campus. There was no senior leadership on any team, because there were no seniors. Kids were thrust into starting positions in sports they’d never before played because they didn’t have the opportunity to earn their reps on junior varsity teams, because, well, there were none of those either.

Three years later, and while it’s not yet time to consider the Jaguars as being all-around championship caliber, one title has now been brought home – congratulations to the Carrboro High women’s state 2A cross country champs! – and as the 2009 fall sports season proved, the Jags are, overall, on their way up, and right now you’d have to squint to see the ceiling. A number of Carrboro Jaguar teams are building from a solid foundation with a ton of talent.

A new beginning

While most students, many of whom were former Chapel Hill or East Chapel Hill High attendees, entering the doors of Carrboro High School three years ago worried about finding a new spot at lunch, buttering up another set of teachers and making enough friends to survive their remaining high school years, many were faced with additional uncertainties.

What will my new soccer coach be like? Will I make the football team? Can the field hockey team compete against the likes of the already-established powerhouses across town?

Being a student-athlete is at the core of many kids’ high school dreams, and switching teams midway through can be tough. In sports such as field hockey or lacrosse, where Chapel Hill and East Chapel Hill Highs reign supreme, it was, for the new Carrboro student-athletes, akin to leaving the perpetual champion New York Yankees for the ever-rebuilding Pittsburgh Pirates midway through a season.

Sure, it can be seen as a challenge to overcome; but for teenagers, it’s more likely to be seen as an obstacle.

Head football coach Jason Tudryn was there from the beginning and offered some perspective on the challenges of his first three years of coaching.

“You have to learn how to fail in life in order to be successful, and I think it’s hard for kids nowadays to put themselves in an environment where they won’t be successful,” he said. “It’s important to learn from those mistakes, and our guys have done a great job of resilience, bouncing back from setbacks.”

After two years at the bottom of the standings, the 2009 season was a breakout year for the Jags. The team won its first home game, beat cross-town rival East Chapel Hill for the first time, won its first conference game and made the 2A playoffs.

Quarterback Derek Bryant also was there from the beginning, starting at quarterback as a freshman – a great opportunity, but a potentially daunting task. Bryant was competing against defenses that had been training and lifting weights at the high school level for years. He spent more time on the ground than celebrating in the end zone.

“As juniors, a bunch of our starters remember getting beat pretty badly almost every game as freshmen,” Bryant said. “That helps now when we’re preparing for those same teams; it’s motivation.”

Bryant and his teammates went through the losses, the ridicule from classmates and their own second thoughts. It brought them closer and forged a friendship that allowed them to overcome the odds of succeeding any time soon.

“We definitely struggled together,” Bryant said. “I think that’s what makes it so fun now, the fact that we all struggled together. And now that we are successful, it makes it sweeter.”

“They are a brotherhood because they’ve seen more adverse situations than a lot of kids their age, and they’ve done it together,” Tudryn added. “They’ve shared success and failure, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness. The fact that they shared these things together makes lasting memories; there is definitely that cohesion with the guys.”

Learning curve

Cohesion may well be the primary reason the athletic landscape at Carrboro is looking brighter these days, but there are other reasons, most more tangible than that.

Last year was the first that most teams had enough skilled players to form junior varsity squads. Because there were no seniors the first semester, the school population was low, as was the interest in being part of a struggling sports team.

JV teams prepare student-athletes for varsity play, teach them a team’s scheme or strategies in less stressful conditions and let freshmen and sophomores mature both mentally and physically before taking on more-seasoned opponents.

That was a luxury Carrboro didn’t have.

“Overall, the point of a JV team is you want to develop kids, not just as soccer players or lacrosse or whatever, but it’s important that kids understand what it means to be a student-athlete,” Carrboro men’s soccer head coach James Mundia said.

“There’s a learning curve that comes with being a student-athlete, not just with the sport itself, but also with things like how do you handle having practice and having a full course load of homework every night,” he added.

Having a JV team is not only a big help to the coaches, but the players as well.

“As far as experience-wise, that’s really helped, having guys playing and getting game time in,” Bryant said. “I feel like the JV definitely helps them. And it helps varsity, because JV really plays hard in practice, because they want to make us look bad.”

Plus, it’s not just the extra playing time; it’s the playing time in the same system for a number of years. JV gives players an opportunity to ease into the rigors of learning to play a sport under a certain system and certain playing style.

“Coming along before JV, it was a little more trial-and-error. Now it’s a situation where we’ve established rules, and a routine. So now it’s a matter of getting everyone on board and saying, ‘This is how we do things,’” Mundia said.

Carrboro sports: here and now

And that’s really what it comes down to, with the whole Carrboro community getting behind a school and a sports program.

Tudryn said he remembers a time when the stands were empty, and his athletes had to feed off their own voices and motivation.

“Now, you come to a Friday night football game and it’s a great atmosphere,” Tudryn said. “I go to Weaver Street Market the week after and some random person I’ve never met in a Carr-boro football shirt says, ‘Hey, coach; congrats.’”

Mundia remembers when his players used to wear East Chapel Hill High T-shirts to practice and he had to remind them that Carrboro sports are what’s here and now.

“It’s a beautiful place, because everyone at Carrboro High School … is really positive, everyone is really pulling for each other,” Tudryn said. “Their peers are behind them, the community is behind them.”

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