Fall Season Comes to a Close for NBHS Sports Teams
By Matthew Cannata | Sports Correspondent at October 24, 2023 | 8:30 am | Print
Believe it or not, the fall season for all of the sports teams, with the exception of football, is winding down at New Britain High School. As of press time, the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams will have completed their season and the cross country team ends their season on Oct. 25. The girls’ volleyball team will end their season on Oct/ 27.
Despite none of the teams qualifying for the state tournament, the head coaches for each of them are looking forward to making progress heading into next season. Matthew Denecour, head coach of the boys’ soccer team, said that there were a lot of positives taken from this season.
“Although our record did not reflect this, there were many positives taken from this season. Young players improved and contributed and some seniors improved to help contribute off the bench and overall made great contributions to our program.”
When talking about the standouts throughout the season, Denecour highlighted three of them that helped the team in the various phases of the game.
“The standout players throughout the season were Kuba Kazmierczak, Josh Mendietta and Maciej Kalowski. Josh for his goal scoring, Maciej for his solid defending and Kuba for his overall play making ability.”
Dencour noted that Mendietta will be returning next season and will be the leader of the team along with Marcris Webb. In addition, Nikodem Jarmoszko will be returning from an injury that ended his season earlier this year.
The girls’ soccer team, which was led by Kevin Williams, finished the season with only three wins but improved as the season went on. Williams, who is in his first year coaching the girls, expected this coming into the season with only seven seniors to lean on. Next year, with many of his younger players returning, Williams expects to be much more competitive and will look to add more wins on the board.
“We played against girls who have been together for 10 years. They were comfortable with their teammates and they understood the standard of soccer that is expected. We had a young team and only two of our seniors started for us. We’ll look forward to developing our young players. One of our goals is to get our players to commit to running track and playing soccer in the spring, which will only help us grow moving forward.”
Williams noted that his standout players were Olga Koszykowska, Savanna Costa, Kamaria Miller, Joanna Tobiaz, Ava Morell, Natalie Brewer, Marina Wilson Gabby Roy and Natasha Marrero.
The girls’ volleyball team, led by Michelle Abraham, had three wins as of press time with three more games to play. Similar to the girls’ soccer team, there were only four seniors on the roster, with two of them - Alexis Sulewski and Destini Kennedy - serving as captains. The future looks bright for them as two juniors will be back with the program for the 2015 season. Charlene Best, the setter, is looking to improve on a solid year along with the middle blocker and outside hitter, Marlena Sawicka.
As for the cross country team, the program has struggled to get athletes to join the team over the past several years. This year, they had six on the official roster and struggled to compete with other schools who would bring over 20 athletes to each meet. With that said, the athletes didn’t give up or get discouraged. They were led by senior Liam Kane, who finished in the five meets they took part in. Head coaches John Richard and George Kawecki will look to get more athletes out next fall in hopes of bolstering their squad.
Finally, the football team is currently 4-2 and will take on Hall High School on Friday in West Hartford at 7 p.m. They will then have four games remaining – East Hartford (home), Glastonbury (away), Newington (home) and then against Berlin on Thanksgiving Eve at Veterans Stadium. There is a lot of promise and optimism right now with the team and they’ll look to continue their quest to make the playoffs in the coming weeks. Head coach Tebucky Jones believes they have the talent to do just that.
“We have several standout players - Marcus Torres, Elvin Silva, Alex Swaby, Charles Gaskin, Joshua Graves Zach Connolly and others. All of them can make a play at any time to change the game. We want to continue to go out and play one game at a time. We want to control the clock with our running game and of course, keep our opponents out of the end zone.”
Football will soon be the only sport in town after this weekend. For those looking forward to basketball, wrestling and indoor track, that will begin in the middle of December.
