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Lacrosse Seniors Honored
Woodstock Academy seniors, from left: Emma Auker, Kileigh Gagnon, Eliza Dutson, Rachel Canedy, Peyton Saracina and Sierra Bedard celebrate Senior Day with coach Mikayla Jones (middle). Photo by Marc Allard.

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Roundup
Girls’ tennis
team clinches
tie for title
The Woodstock Academy girls’ tennis team clinched at least a tie for the ECC Div. 2 regular season title May 14. They downed Killingly 7-0 to raise their record to 6-1 overall and 6-0 in the division.
“We are thrilled of course but we’re going to stay focused on playing to the best of our abilities and hopefully that will come with an outright division title,” said head coach Keith Atchinson. The Centaurs can do that with a win over St. Bernard this week.
They face the Saints twice this week and need to take only one win for the Div. 2 title.
Consistency has been a key for the Centaurs. Against Killingly Addy Smith, the top singles player, posted a 6-2, 6-1 victory. No.2 singles player Jackie Trudeau was a 6-2, 6-3 winner; Sydney Schuler walked away with a 6-1, 6-0 win and Alexa Fernandez followed suit with a 6-0, 6-1 victory.
The doubles also swept Killingly as the first doubles team of Ellie Bishop-Klee and Logan Reynolds got things going with a 6-0, 6-2 win. It was the fifth win in a row for the Academy.
The team faces Div. 1 opponents, Fitch and Stonington, this week in the academy’s first four-match week of the season.
Boys’ Track
For a first time this season, the academy boys’ track team had to compete on a track that was foreign to them but the coaches said they knew what to do.
The Centaurs beat the Panthers, 104-45.
Coach Pete Lusa was moving his athletes around a bit. For example, senior Adam Schimmelpfennig won the 110-meter hurdles but was not in the 300-meter hurdles as Lusa put him into the 4x400 meter.
Instead, he told Aaron Allard and Lucas Theriaque to pick up the slack and they did by getting second and third places for the Centaurs.
Eric Phongsa won the 100-meter but did not run the 200, instead concentrating on the 4x100m relay.
The throwers did well with Keenan Lamontagne winning both the shotput (38 feet, 5 inches) and the discus (38-5). Another thrower, Silas Strandson, was first in the javelin, second in the discus and third in the shotput for the Centaurs.
Ethan Aspiras won the 800-meter, Vince Bastura was best in the 3,200 meter, Liam Wilcox won the triple jump and Ian Hoffman was first in the pole vault for the Centaurs (3-2, 3-1 ECC Div. 2).
The ECC championship is May 24 and will be held in Plainfield.
Girls’ Track
With just one dual meet remaining, the Centaurs girls are still undefeated. The Academy posted a 112-31 win over Plainfield in Central Village. Woodstock Academy is now 4-0 in Div. 2 of the ECC and 5-0 overall.
Head coach Josh Welch said: “These last away meets help our coaches focus on our athletes instead of the officiating and organization of running a meet at home. It’s great to be able to focus on the kids and offer more encouragement and feedback,” Welch said.
The other plus is the Centaurs will return to Plainfield on May 24 when the Div. 2 and 3 championships are held.
Sophomore Bella Sorrentino was tops in the shotput and the 200-meter and freshman Jillian Edwards was once again best in the high jump and 100-meter hurdles. Other first-place finishes: Talia Tremblay (400-meter); Reegan Reynolds (triple jump); Gabby Couture (pole vault); Ksenjia Martinovic (300-hurdles); Leah Castle (1600-meter); Carah Bruce (3200-meter); Leila MacKinnon (javelin), Magdalena Myslenaki  (discus),  and Linsey Arends (800-meter).
MacKinnon and Arends both qualified for the Class MM state championship in the 800m and Myslenaki did so in discus.
Girls’ Lacrosse
The Academy girls’ lacrosse team celebrated its Senior Day prior to the game with the Fitch Falcons, honoring six seniors: Rachel Canedy, Peyton Saracina, Emma Auker, Eliza Dutson, Sierra Bedard and Kileigh Gagnon.
Coach Mikayla Jones said it will be tough without those six next year. They will be hard to replace but the departure of the six seniors means that six others will have to step up and she believes she has the athletes to fill the spots.
The Centaurs (2-8, 1-7 ECC Div. 2) were not happy with the result on the field as they lost to Fitch, 20-1. Shannon Gagnon was the only Centaur to put the ball in the net, her 13th this season.
Earlier, against NFA, the Centaurs did much better, winning 9-8. Canedy scored five goals and Sofia Murray made 13 saves in goal. It was the most Canedy has scored in a single game in her high school career and it included the game winner which came with less than five minutes to play.
Sydney Haskins, Saracina, Dutson and Shannon Gagnon also scored for Woodstock Academy in the win.
Softball
One thing Academy softball pitchers did not have to worry about last week was run support as the team put 48 runs combined on the board in wins over Wheeler and Tourtellotte. Coach Jay Gerum said: “There are different levels of pitching and we’re always practicing for the fast, compete at the highest level type of pitching, but a lot of times, pitchers who don’t have as much velocity mess us up. Against Killingly and some other teams, we struggled a bit.”
The Centaurs put seven runs up on the board in the first inning and 10 more in the second to post a 21-0 victory in five innings.
The beneficiary of the offense was senior Meg Preston who was making her first start of the season. She allowed the Tigers just two hits and struck out 10. She also knocked in three runs in the game.
Madison Martinez had a pair of hits and drove in three runs. Sarah McArthur, Leveille and Emily Goodell all drove in a pair of runs each for the Centaurs (12-3, 11-1 ECC, Div. 2).
Woodstock Academy had 12 hits against the Tigers and also benefitted from 15 walks from Tourtellotte pitching.
The Centaurs had even more pop in their bats against Wheeler where they posted a 27-14.
The Academy had 31 hits, four of those by Martinez. The catcher also drove in eight. Leveille added four hits and six runs batted in while Marissa Mayhew added five hits and three RBIs.
The Centaurs helped the Lions score eight runs in the third inning when they committed four errors.
Baseball
Academy baseball coach Brian Murphy has been working hard on his team’s approach to hitting with two strikes and it paid off against Tourtellotte when Brendan Hill had a 1-2 count with two outs and the bases loaded in the top of the first inning. He delivered a three-run triple.
That three-run lead was more than freshman pitcher Riley O’Brien needed. O’Brien threw only 84 pitches, giving up just three hits, and striking out only two to post a 7-0 win over Tourtellotte.
Hill finished 3-for-3 at the plate. Zach Roethlein and Hamilton Barnes added two hits in the win for the Centaurs (12-4, 11-2 ECC, Div. 1).
Murphy wasn’t as pleased with the team’s performance in its 4-1 win over Wheeler earlier. “It was not a pretty game. We were flat. We didn’t hit well and we were lucky just to get a win,” Murphy said.
Wheeler took the lead with a run in the top of the first, but it was all that starting pitcher Eddie Niejadlik would yield as he went the distance, allowed just two hits and struck out eight.
The performances of Niejadlik and O’Brien meant that Murphy could rest his top two pitchers, Kaden Murphy and Jon Smith, for the entire week.
The Centaurs scored all of their runs against Wheeler in the third inning with Jacob Hernandez, Smith and Roethlein knocking in runs.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy

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