April brings an end to the winter high school sports season and the beginning of the spring season. We transition from basketball to baseball and softball. We move from indoors in stuffy gyms weighed down by our winter gear protecting us from record cold to outdoors and the beautiful fragrance of fresh mowed grass, shorts and t-shirts, children laughing and the crack of bats.
Our Catoctin boys basketball teamed finished the season in the regional quarterfinals against Boonsboro. Senior Cooper Wiles and senior Zach Williams were the anchors for Coach Wagner’s team with Wiles leading the team in scoring averaging 10 points per game and Williams leading the team in steals with 19 on the season. The departing seniors leave behind a team with loads of potential for next season with 6’2” junior Gabe Contreras who averaged 8 points per game and was their #1 rebounder, teamed up with 6’5” sophomore Nate Morlan racking up just over 160 rebounds on the season between them. One honorable mention to look out for next season is freshmen Brayden Rickerd who knocked down 81 percent from the free throw line this year. Cougars boys 2026-27 basketball will be exciting!
Our Lady Cougars basketball team had another incredible year. For the second year in a row, they were at the top of the 1A division with some really stunning wins against Linganore, Middletown and South Carroll. They traveled to Smithsburg to face the Leopards in the regionals again this year. Unlike last year, they put the “fear of God” into the Smithsburg faithful taking the undefeated Leopards team right down to the wire in a nail biter that collapsed for our Lady Cougars when two Smithsburg girls hit back-to-back impossible three pointers in the final minutes to end the Cougars season. Seniors Kelsey Troxell and Brooke Williams led the team in scoring and grit. Both were completely exhausted in the final minutes of the game, yet they powered through the fatigue and gathered their teammates together for a final push. It was another example of the team’s “never give up” attitude. The Lady Cougars finished the season 19-5 with three of those losses to Smithsburg. Scrappy freshmen Leah French led all scorers in that game with 15 points. Leah and Olivia Hoyt could be Leopard killers next year. Lord knows, we’re tired of losing to Smithsburg. Kelsey Troxell will play for the Hagerstown Hawks next season in her freshmen year at HCC and Brooke Williams will play D1 ball in the Big South Conference at Gardner Webb in North Carolina. We wish them much success in their college careers!
Spring is a battle between winter and summer where we get caught in the middle. Last March, I was driving north on 270 and my dashboard temperature read 88 degrees. The next morning it snowed one inch and when I woke up the following morning it read 28 degrees outside. That’s summer sun to winter snow with a 60 degree difference in 24 hours ! I am so glad April is finally here. What a tough winter.
April always brings hope for sunshine and outdoor fun. When I was in fifth and sixth grades, I delivered newspapers for the Washington Post. That meant getting up at four in the morning to fold my papers, load my rear wheel tandem bicycle baskets and ride the seven miles every morning to deliver over one hundred newspapers. It was precision riding at its finest. You’d steer with one arm, grab a folded paper with the other and with just the right timing and bicycle skill, you could stuff the newspaper into the homeowner’s roadside newspaper tube at full pedal. It was a game. It was a contest to see how many papers you could stuff without wrecking your bike or having to slam on the brakes, back up and pickup a missed stuff attempt. But the thing I remember most about those early mornings was the smell of the spring morning and the sound of the birds just before dawn when the sun showed the vaguest hints of light. While I rode through my morning routine, tires whirring across paved roads, I drifted off into dreams of hitting the game winning home run in Little League. In the back of my mind I could hear faint sounds of the birds beginning to stir. Moment by moment, the sound would grow until without realizing it, the birds were blaring out a cheerful welcome to the growing light of a new day. Decades later, at daybreak, the sounds of spring instantly catapult me back in time to my paper route. I used the money from that paper route to buy my very own “Harmon Killebrew” baseball bat. Harmon Killebrew played for the Washington Senators when I was young. They called him the “Killer”. I named my bat “Killer”. My younger self was convinced there was a magical power embued onto that bat from the man who averaged 39 homers a year. That bat finally made it to the major leagues in 1966. Killebrew left with the Senators in 1960 when the team moved to Milwaukee. In July 1966, at age 14, I went to RFK stadium to see Milwaukee play the Senators. Many of the “old” Senators were playing for Milwaukee. I brought “Killer” to that Senators game and had Killebrew sign it for me.
That’s the thing about spring. It makes us feel young again. We look in the back of the closet for that glove and bat to play catch with our grandchildren and the neighborhood kids. We forget that we lost a step over the winter and they gained one. We play the game we love and remember our “feats of old”. And, if we’re really lucky we get to broadcast a Cougars baseball or softball game or two and perhaps watch future stars in the making.
I have an idea. Come on down to Catoctin high school baseball or softball diamonds this spring and we’ll enjoy the sights and sounds of spring together. It’s a great afternoon of local high school fun. You’ll see friends you haven’t seen in ages. You’ll cheer on the Cougars. And who knows, maybe we’ll relive a memory or two as we watch our Cougars play ball?
Go find that glove in the back of the closet and bring it with you! And don’t forget to say Hi. I’ll be on top of the home team dugout.