Fall Sports Recap

Alexander Judd and Johnny Yang|January 14, 2022

Girls Swimming

Coming off a year without a Swimming and Diving season due to COVID-19, the Girls Swimming and Diving Team brought home the Girls PSAL Swimming and Diving championship for the first time in 5 years, going 9-0 in the regular season and winning the title over their rivals at Stuyvesant High School.

The team was led by head coach Derek Swartz and co-captains Phoebe Saunders (‘22) and Amber Neria (‘22), who attribute the team’s success to hard work and dedication. Neria mentioned that the team “practiced every day for at least two hours” and even had morning practices, starting at 6:30 AM.

Saunders acknowledged that one of the biggest strengths of the team was their confidence. “We had girls who broke school records and PSAL records this year,” she said.

Still, the season did not come without challenges. Head coach Derek Schwartz tested positive for COVID-19 in the middle of the season and was out for 2 weeks. Neria and Saunders stepped up for the team and made sure everything went smoothly without him. “It motivated our team to do better,” Neria stated.

Even without a diver on the team, Tech managed to win the final meet over Stuyvesant. Team manager Nicole Chen (‘22) mentioned that in the final meet, Stuyvesant automatically received the points for the diving portion of the meet because Tech had no divers.

Tech defeated Hunter in the first round of the playoffs with a score of 52-45 and Bronx Science in the second round 58-40 to advance to the finals. In the championship meet, Tech soundly defeated Stuyvesant 60-41 and managed to win first place for every single event. “We always had a bit of a lead but it definitely expanded as the meet went on,” Saunders stated.

After losing in the finals the last two seasons, Tech has finally brought home the Swimming and Diving Championship. They look forward to continuing their success in the future with a great young core of swimmers.

Girls Cross Country

The Girls Cross Country Team won the city championship for a second straight season, led by head coach Nick Ruiz and Co-Captains Farah Osman (‘22), Susan Jimenez (‘22), Ariana Wasim (‘22), and Tiffany Lin (‘22).

Coach Ruiz played a major role in the team’s success this year, motivating and pushing the team to perform to their full potential. “He sees each one of these girls as a vortex of potential and I think that we were all internally driven by the need to make him proud of us,” Osman said.

Wasim was proud of being a part of a great group of highly motivated and dedicated athletes that relied on each other to succeed in each meet. “We were all strong at different points and helped our teammates to keep going,” Wasim mentioned.

According to Jimenez, the team overcame several challenges due to the pandemic, such as adjusting to the intense training after school and competing in regular meets on the weekends. “We turned this setback into fuel for our motivation to succeed this season,” she said.

Frequent injuries, slumps, and stress also plagued the Engineers. Still, the team overcame this by keeping a positive attitude the entire season and learning about injury prevention. These injuries gave the team a “higher tolerance for setbacks,” Osman acknowledged.

In their final meet, Tech took first place with 48 points as their top five runners, Farah Osman, Susan Jimenez, Danielle Andrews, and Michelle Lipski, took 2nd, 5th, 9th, and 15th place respectively, over their rivals at Stuyvesant who took second place with 87 points.

Tech looks to continue its dominance in the next cross country season with a talented pool of freshmen, sophomore, and junior runners.

Boys Cross Country

For the first time since 2014, the Boys Cross Country Team has won the PSAL city championship, edging out Susan Wagner High school.

The team was led by head coach Wade Clarke and co-captains Dylan Zhao (‘22), Andres Orbegozo (‘22), Alex Jopek (‘22), Erik Nebel (‘22), and Jonny Wu (‘22).

The team’s biggest strengths were its depth, coaching, and hard work. “We won because we had such a deep team and because of Coach Clarke, who we had a lot of trust in,” Zhao mentioned.

The biggest hardship that the team faced was the lack of funding they received. “We barely got any funding and we use a public track field for our training field,” Zhao revealed. The team also only used the weight room a total of three times throughout the season and locker rooms were unavailable to them.

In the final meet, Tech won by the slightest margin. Jonah Reisner, Travis Wolfe Thompson, Dylan Zhao, Andres Orbegozo, Samuel Dultsin, Elijah Gentry, and Aleksander Jopek took 4th, 6th, 16th, 21st, 24th, 25th, and 30th place respectively, squeezing out the win against Susan Wagner High School. With the first five runners tied between Tech and Susan Wagner, 71-71, Gentry’s placing secured Tech’s victory.

The future of the team is bright with 4 of the 7 varsity members returning next year. With Reisner and Wolfe ranked as 4th and 6th in the city respectively, the team hopes to repeat next year as city champions.

Varsity Girls Volleyball

After losing in the 2018-2019 championship against Bronx Science, the Varsity Girls Volleyball Team looked to redeem themselves in the 2021-2022 season, led by head coach Grigory Arest and co-captains Dylan Low (‘22) and Alex Skoczylas (‘22).

The team went 6-2 in the regular season and eventually lost in two straight sets in the second round of the playoffs to Midwood High School. Their only two regular season losses were to John Jay Campus, who made it to the city finals this year.

Despite losing in the second round of the playoffs, Skoczylas saw the season as a successful one. “None of us had played together before, but we quickly developed a great team bond on and off the court,” she said. Low also believed that great team chemistry played a big role in the team’s success.

The team was plagued with injuries throughout the season. “Many games we had to play down a player or a few players and some just played through injuries,” Skoczylas said. Due to this, it took a while before the team played a game at full strength. However, others were able to step in for injured players.

Throughout the season, the team’s mental toughness proved to be the greatest weakness. The team’s mentality just wasn’t as strong as it could have been during some games. “It was hard to return to games with spectators and other coaches watching,” Low expressed.

With the future of the team in good hands, the Varsity Girls Volleyball team looks to go deeper in the playoffs next year with the goal of bringing home the PSAL championship. Skoczylas and Low are confident that the team will come back stronger and work even harder in the 2022-2023 season, picking up from where they left off this season.

Girls Soccer

Two years after being defeated by Beacon High School in the 2019 PSAL Girls Varsity Soccer Championship at St. John’s University, the Girls Varsity Soccer Team, led by co-captains Ali DeLorenzo (‘22) and Sophie Rubinsky (‘22), looked to redeem themselves in the 2021 season.

The girls started the season strong, accumulating 45 goals in the first four games of the regular season alone. They went on to plow through their competition, going undefeated while averaging 9 goals per game in the regular season. The team only conceded a single goal the entire season.

During the playoffs, the momentum continued — Tech annihilated Eleanor Roosevelt High School 7-1 in the first round, and went on to defeat Tottenville and then Susan Wagner to place in their second consecutive City Championship game, this time on Randall’s Island against Hunter College High School.

Hunter led 2-0 at the end of the first half of the championship game. PSAL rules do not allow referees to issue stoppage time in playoff games, so a Tech goal scored just after regulation time expired was invalidated, which shifted momentum going into the second half. Hunter went on to win 4-1, led by Dylan Jovanovic, a member of the United States Women’s Youth National Team pool.

“Obviously I’m disappointed that we didn’t win the whole thing, but I’m still extremely proud of everyone on the team, especially the younger players that stepped up,” Rubinsky noted. One such player is Charlotte Connoly (‘23), who had a breakthrough freshman year in 2019, scoring 27 goals for Tech. This year, she once again led the team in goals scored with 28 and is sure to help the team succeed in the season to come.

“The season went really well,” Rubinsky reflected. “We honestly just had a bad day on the day of the finals. I think if we played them again we would have given them a tougher match.” Looking forward to the 2022 season, she has faith that her younger teammates will carry the momentum of the team’s past successes and finally secure a championship victory.

Boys Football

The Tech football team finished their disappointing 2021 season with a record of 1-7. Still, according to the players, the season was not a total failure.

“The ‘football’ aspect of the season wasn’t ideal,” defensive end Ethan Castro (‘22) said. “The successes of the team were, for the most part, off the field.”

“We started off strong,” he said, “but then it started to trail off as we started to see how we were relative to the other teams.”

Tech put up a strong fight in their season opener against Lafayette, in which they lost a heartbreaking double-overtime thriller 34-32. After that point, the Engineers got blown out in nearly every other game this season. Offensive woes proved to be the team’s biggest issue: the team got shutout in four of their eight games and only managed to score in the double digits twice. The team’s one victory came against Tilden Educational Campus, in which they scored 22 points.

“You can’t expect much from a group of kids who have never played football before,” Castro explained. The team missed their season last year, and few of the players put in work to improve during the offseason.

“But,” he added, “the camaraderie we had was incomparable. Freshman? Senior? It didn’t matter. We all got along as if we had known each other our whole lives… Of course, the failures were there and were apparent — on paper. But I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything,” Castro said.

With Tech’s new football field set to open next year, the younger players look to have success in the coming season on a field they can call their own.

Girls Tennis

After going deep into the playoffs in their 2018 and 2019 seasons, Tech’s Girls Varsity Tennis team found themselves in the playoffs after an outstanding season once again. The girls went undefeated in the regular season but fell in the quarterfinals, their first round of the playoffs.

“Overall, the season went pretty well. We made it to the playoffs like we usually do. The entire season we had a winning streak until we lost to Staten Island Tech,” reflected second doubles player Brianna Yau (‘22). “

When asked if the team was confident about succeeding this season, she explained, “in terms of qualifying for the playoffs we were confident. Beating SIT? Not so much. As a senior, it was disappointing to lose in the quarterfinals.”

Yau attributed the success of the team during their undefeated campaign in the regular season to a close bond between players, which developed between last year’s season (which was played in the spring rather than the fall due to COVID) and the preseason for this fall.

The team’s first and second doubles pairs performed especially well throughout the season. Yau believes the team’s experimentation with different doubles pairs to see whose strengths and weaknesses worked best together was responsible for the doubles players’ success.