OBSERVER Photo by Braden Carmen Above, is a photograph of the 2019 Fredonia Hillbillies varsity football team earlier this year.

Announcing the many achievements and wins for the sports department at Fredonia Central School, Greg Lauer, sports director, presented the fall sports overview to the Board of Education members at their latest meeting.

Lauer started off by highlighting the academic achievements of the athletes at Fredonia High School. According to Lauer, out of the eight fall sports teams at Fredonia, seven of them qualified for New York State Scholar Athlete Team awards. Of these teams, 102 total athletes had a GPA of 90 percent or higher. The remaining team, which was football, came very close to earning the award, with their average GPA at 89.7 percent.

“I wanted to go through our teams, talk about their accomplishments and highlight a scholar athlete or two from each team,” said Lauer before he went on to present the fall sports teams of 2019.

Girls tennis

Coach: Lisa Johnston

Team members: 11

The girls tennis team won their third straight league title, they are 10- 0 league champions and have 26 straight county wins. At the County Championships, Bernadette Gens finished in first place and Alicia Kluck finished in second. This is the second year in a row that these two had to square off in the finals. Ten of the 11 girls on the team achieved the NYS Scholar Athlete Award title.

Boys modified soccer

Coach: Aaron Pietro

Team members: 23

The boys modified soccer team finished with a league record of 10-2 and overall record of 13-2. The team is comprised of grades 7-9.

Boys varsity soccer

Coach: Jim Rush

Team members: 20

The boys varsity soccer had nine all league selections, league record 6-2-2 in second place and overall record 7-6-2. The team also had 17 of 20 members achieve the NYS Scholar Athlete title.

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Girls modified soccer

Coach: Vince Gullo

Team members: 25

The girls modified soccer finished 9-2-1 with their overall record the same. The team is made up of grades 7-9.

Girls varsity soccer

Coach: Brett Gould

Team members: 17

The girls varsity soccer team placed third in league with 2-6-2 and their overall record being 3-10-2. Sixteen of the girls were NYS Scholar Athletes.

Girls modified volleyball

Coach: Zach Forys

Team members: 21

The girls modified volleyball was actually split into two teams to keep everybody playing and involved. Overall record was 2-12.

Girls junior varsity volleyball

Coach: Julie Vallone

Team members: 14

Overall record for the girls JV volleyball team was 10-4 this year. This team has members from 8-10 grades.

Girls varsity volleyball

Coach: Amanda Krakowiak

Team members: 9

The girls varsity volleyball had a league record of 9-7, overall record of 10-8, had two all league selections and made it to the sectional semi-finals. All nine members of the team were NYS Scholar Athletes.

Modified cross country

Coaches: Laurie Brifu and Mark Fitzgerald

Team members: 16

On the modified cross country team, eight athletes improved their times by more than one minute, four athletes improved by more than two minutes and two athletes improved by more than three minutes.

Boys varsity cross country

Coach: Tom Stokes

Team members: 22

The boys varsity cross country team had a league record of 16-5, finishing in third place. They had one all league selection and finished 8th in CCAA Class C. 12 of the 22 students were NYS Scholar Athletes.

Girls varsity cross country

Coach: Carol Zirkle

Team members: 11 (one from Westfield)

Girls varsity cross country finished in seventh place at sectionals Class C, first place in league with 22-6 and had a State Championship participant, Emily Brown, who finished 12th place. Ten of the students were NYS Scholar Athletes. Emily Brown was also named CCAA Runner of the Year. The team had four all league selections.

Girls swimming

Coach: Joanne Lotter and Steven Romans, Alycia Gossett for diving

Team members: 25 (one from Forestville)

Girls swimming finished first place with league record of 9-1-1 and finished fourth place in sectionals Class B. There were 15 sectional qualifiers and 17 of the students were NYS Scholar Athletes. Tori Spacc won 25th at states and Elizabeth Pucci-Schaefer won 19th.

Junior varsity football

Coach: Justin Sherlock assisted by Vince Fogarty

Team members: 22

The JV football team was made up of 9-10 graders and had an overall record of 2-3-1.

Varsity football

Coach: Greg Sherlock assisted by Jordan Sherlock, Matt Polvino and Steve Gromala

Team members: 30

The varsity football team had a league record of 3-3, overall record of 4-4 and had many league selections. Four athletes were chosen for first team, four for second team and four honorable mentions. Eleven of the students were NYS Scholar Athletes.

Lauer also highlighted some exciting news for the district. Jake Skinner signed with Central Connecticut State to play Division 1 football this year. He also said that there were more signings, but does not have details yet.

Concussions in the school sports have gone down since last year, varsity football having no concussions in 2019, down from one in 2018. JV football had the most with three concussions, down one from the previous year. Boys soccer had zero and girls soccer also had zero, down one from 2018.

Lauer has some ideas that he presented to the board at the meeting. Which included re-introducing JV soccer teams for both boys and girls, realigning the football league so they play schools in CCAA instead of by school size across all of Section VI and continuing a partnership with Fredonia State to host a couple games in 2020.