- Athletics
- Upper School
Senior Days are always an emotional roller-coaster for student-athletes and coaches alike. The season is nearing an end, and for the seniors and their families, also a high school career hopefully filled with feel-good memories.
But for McCallie lacrosse coach Eamon Thornton, this season is a wee bit different than most.
“One, it’s a really good team,” he said Saturday after the Blue Tornado routed Father Ryan 21-1 at Spears Stadium to improve to 11-1 on the season. “But more than that, these seniors have worked hard to build the program, build the culture for when they’re gone. It’s about cherishing the brotherhood, the camaraderie they have and making sure it gets passed down. Plus, there are 11 of them, which is a big class. I’ll be really sad when this season is over.”
Three of those seniors, Owen Huckabay, James Irwin, and Tucker Slagle, have become “student-assistant” coaches for Thornton this season due to previously reclassifying during their high school careers.
That has left eight seniors on the playing roster to lead the Blue Tornado on the field, beginning with North Carolina–Chapel Hill signee Henry Boyd, first-year senior JA Hudson, who scored the 300th point of his career in the win over Father Ryan and is headed to Drexel, and Henry Toole, who’ll be playing lacrosse at UMass next season.
Nathan Blake, Aiden Conant, Tyler Gay, Cohen Hunter, and Ryan Stanford round out the seniors on the field. Huckabay (Northwest Nazarene), Irwin and Slagle (Washington and Lee) will resume their lacrosse playing in college, while Blake will also play collegiately at Rhodes College.
Noted Hudson over the weekend of how this large senior class has embraced him: “I wasn’t expected to be welcomed this way. McCallie is such an amazing community. They’ve all supported me so much and made me a better player. And it’s so fun playing on this team. The leadership skills have been amazing and we have so many more tools than we did at my old school. I’ve enjoyed this season so much.”
Thornton credits the senior leadership to Boyd, Hudson and Toole, but says the parents of the younger players have taken notice of the entire senior class.
“One parent came up to me today (Senior Day) to tell me how the seniors have wanted to be their friends, make them feel the brotherhood, but are also holding them accountable to a certain standard. They’re not letting poor play or habits go uncorrected.”
Junior Elijah Kenner agrees.
“They’re (the seniors) calling us out if we don’t do what’s expected of us,” he said. “They’re pushing us every day to be better. But they’re also working hard to bond with us, to be close on and off the field. I think we’re a closer, more connected team than we were a year ago.”
If there has been one moment that has shown that brotherhood and chemistry to be real, Thornton returns to March 29, to a road game at Blue Ridge.
“They’re a really good team and we were down 8-4 at halftime,” recalled the coach. “Then we got down 10-4 in the third quarter. We called a timeout, the coaches and I discussed what we needed to do, what had to change. When we huddled up, the players were already discussing what the coaches had talked about. They kept saying, ‘We’re not going to let this happen.’ And we came back and won 13-12. Right then, I felt like we might have something special here.”
How special should come into clearer focus over the next few days. Montgomery Bell Academy visits Friday. A road trip to archrival Baylor is on tap for April 22. Ensworth comes to Spears after that, then the playoffs begin on May 1, wrapping up with the state title game at Centennial High School near Nashville on May 16.
“It’s hard to believe we’ve only got five or six games left,” said Thornton. “I really don’t want it to end.”
But Hudson has already looked ahead to how it might end and he likes the possibilities.
“The state title game is on a Saturday, then we graduate the next day,” he noted. “What could be better than winning the state and graduating in the same weekend?”
- lacrosse