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PHOTO BY RICK WALTER

TEAM GOALS. Madeline Scott, a returning senior taking a shot during soccer practice earlier this week, will be helping younger players.

Annie Wright preps for fall sports

By Rick Walter

With 157 students enrolled in its upper school, Annie Wright is known much more prominently as a college prep school, and will never be confused for a sports academy. However, the volleyball team has made two consecutive trips to the state playoffs, the first team from the school to have ever gone to the playoffs. The cross-country team can also claim a huge amount of success under coach Emil Verbovski.

There are athletes, for sure, working hard on the beautiful campus on Tacoma’s North End, and even if grades come first, for some, sports is not far behind.

Tia Wright, a junior on the volleyball team, has been playing the sport since the second grade and her athletic lineage leads back to her mom, Berit, who was one of the top collegiate tennis players in the country at the University of Colorado.

“I was always much more into athletics than grades – until recently,” said Wright in an interview this week.

How recently?

“Last year.”

Although Wright, a junior from Kent, has been at Annie Wright since the 4th grade, she said it only really occurred to her in her sophomore year that volleyball was not going to last forever and that she had better get ready for the rest of her life.

“I’m glad I figured that out,” she said.

Her budding maturity, and a couple of her buddies on the team, are going to help her help a new group of younger players if they hope to return to the playoffs, as the team who lost some good players from last year. Returning with Wright, who is the team’s best setter, will be hitters Stephanie Gann and Li Murphy.

This core of leaders will be helping coach Rodney Kalalaw bring some of the new players along.

“We have a lot of room for improvement. We won’t be starting out at the same level we ended at last year, but as the season goes on we will get a lot better. With coach Kalalaw, everyone will get better,” Wright said.

The other fall sport for which a team is fielded in the Emerald City League, soccer, has simply been overwhelmed by competition beyond its means. As a result, the team, which might field no more than 13 girls, will play a junior varsity schedule. With only three returning players that have solid foundations of experience – Emma Day, Katherine Doesburg and Madeline Scott – the new schedule should allow the team to experience a more appropriate level of competition.

The soccer team won two games last year.

“There were times when we competed well, but we were at just too much of a disadvantage against some of the other schools,” said coach Cheryl Zaragoza, standing on the sidelines of practice this week, watching a total of nine girls in drills.

“We expect to have a few more when the international students arrive later this week,” she said.

One by-product of the small school’s sports participation is that students who want to play on a team won’t get cut.

“This is a practical matter, with so few students, but also part of the philosophy of the school, which emphasizes academics but wants each student to experience as full a range of activities as possible,” said Rhondi Adair, the school’s athletic director. He has the longest tenure of any athletic director in the state with 23 years at Annie Wright.

“One value that comes out of an athletics program like this is that the players all have to depend on each other, and that is a good thing,” Adair said.

Students like Tia Wright get that.

“What I like most about volleyball is the amount of communication you have in the game with your teammates. Besides having to be constantly engaged in what’s going on during every moment of a point, you have a real sense that your teammates are depending on you. I like that.”

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