There have been 26 state championships won across all sports in Mount Carmel history, and two of them happened this year.
It has been an awesome athletic year here at MC. With the football program going back to back, wrestling winning a state championship, basketball being runner up for their state championship, golf coming in third place at state as well, and baseball winning a sectional championship for the first time since 2015.
Along with this there has been some great success with the chess team finishing 6th in their conference, and the STEM cohort came second place in Catapult and third place in Maze Runner in the Southworks Robotics Olympics.
Fittingly, there also were 26 seniors who participated in different signing days this year,committing to play athletics at a variety of collegiate levels in multiple sports.
All in all this is arguably the best athletic year at MC this century. Also, it would be up there in all of MC history, but there were multiple crazy years in the 1990s, with MC winning ten Catholic League championships in a row, along with the City Championships even earlier.
It’s undeniable that MC’s athletic programs put on an incredible show this year with all of their achievements. The only year capable of matching it in state championships this century is the 2012-2013 school year when both baseball and football won.
“So that was an incredible year,” said Vice Principal Mr. Bill Nolan about 2012-13. “You can go back to ’98 when we won the state championship in football and then we took second in wrestling and second in hockey. So, I would say those three would be the top and I think this year hits it. Lets just say you applied points to all those sports I think you wouldn’t even come close because we had football and wrestling win state, and then basketball second and you have golf third. Plus the individual state champions that you have in wrestling. I would say that there is a good argument to say that this has been the most complete athletic year we have had.”
The football team from 2012 had an especially good defense that helped win them the state championship.
“I don’t like using the term ‘the best,’ but it’s one of the best, no doubt,” Frank Lenti, who was the head coach at the time, told the Beverly Review. “We’ve had some very good defenses, and these guys are right up there with those. In football, it all starts up front on both sides of the ball. We have two guys on the defensive line who are going to play in the Big Ten next year and two other guys who could do that in the future. Our linebackers also do a great job. You can have the best secondary in the world, but if you can’t put pressure on the quarterback and can’t stop the run, it won’t matter.”
However, there were not another two athletic programs that placed in the top three like they did this year. Basketball and golf did extremely well for the first time in a long time this year.
“What an unbelievable run,” said head coach Phil Segroves after the basketball state championship game. “They’re great young men and extremely hard workers.”
MC was definitely on a hot streak in the 90s with there being state championships won left and right. However, that kind of died down in the 2000s.
“I think so,” said Mr. Scott Tabernacki. “Understandably every school was trying to beat us and got better. What I noticed the difference too is that maybe the specialization of sport has something to do with that. You stayed active year round, you played a couple different sports here so if you were a good athlete on the football team and you played another sport chances are you are likely to be good there. I think that changed a little bit too.”
MC has a target on its back no matter what sport the Caravan plays in, and that provides a challenge because some other schools put a lot of emphasis on trying to beat MC.
What makes MC’s great success this year more impressive is that there are fewer students enrolled compared to some of those years in the 90s.
“There wasn’t as many kids out there,” said Mr. Nolan. “If you look at the enrollments from the late 90s to now we’re probably a couple hundred students less than we were back then.”
Another reason for this being the best MC athletic year of this century is the amount of guys who signed to play at a college level.
“Especially in sports like lacrosse with its popularity here,” said Mr. Tabernacki. “We have even sent a number of rugby guys going to play at the next level which is incredible. So we have had our fair number of high profile guys but, even taking a look at wrestling, to send a couple guys to the big ten and to other different schools too is really impressive.”
MC has had some pretty impressive years in the past but that slowed down a little at the turn of the century. With the only competition being 2012, which didn’t have the number of guys signing to college level or the state placements this year had. It’s safe to say that this is the best athletic year MC has had this century.
As varsity quarterback Jack Elliot has said, “When you come to play at Mount Carmel, you play for championships.”
