Even though the winter season at Concord Academy is the most extended in terms of days, it's the shortest for practices and games. It feels like the winter sports start-up meetings started yesterday. At the end of each season, depending if they met the qualification standards, teams will get to compete in the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) against a pool of qualifiers from the private schools in the New England area.
Each sport has a different setup in which they compete in the tournament. For wrestling, athletes qualify by winning at least two thirds of their matches and are put into a seeded bracket, depending on their record. While last year the team had ten participants in the tournament, with many seniors graduating, Concord only has five going to Phillips Andover on Friday to compete. Next, we head to the mountains and look at the Boys and Girls’ Varsity Ski teams. In the 2022 season, the Boys’ and Girls’ teams had resounding success at the regional level. The girls earned fourth place at the NEPSAC championships and second place in the Central Massachusetts Ski League (CMSL). The boys finished eleventh at the NEPSAC championships and third in the league. This year, the teams will head up to the Proctor school in Andover, New Hampshire, to compete in the Class B NEPSAC Championship.
Looking at our peers competing at a higher level can allow us to take a look at CA's athletic program as a whole. Outside of school, for whatever reason, CA has earned a reputation as a weak athletic school more oriented toward academics and the arts. While it’s no secret that schools in the surrounding areas emphasize their sports more, the reputation surrounding our athletics needs to end. Across the board, CA holds its own or even better on the mat, court, and slopes, and it will be put on display in the coming weeks at the NEPSAC level.