River Hill dominance
If you carefully checked all of our high school polls Tuesday, you might have noticed an extremely rare feat. One school appears in all seven of them.
River Hill is ranked in six sports and is among those considered in the seventh. Most of those rankings are pretty high, too.
The Hawks are No. 1 in football, boys soccer and girls cross country. They are No. 2 in girls soccer, No. 6 in boys cross country and No. 9 in volleyball. They are also among those considered in field hockey -- just below the Top 15.
Consider how difficult it is for many schools to have just one ranked team. Consider also that River Hill is a Class 2A school -- among the smaller 50 percent of all schools in the state.
However, the Hawks’ success in the fall is nothing new. Last fall, their teams won five state titles in the fall -- football, boys soccer, girls soccer, boys cross country and girls cross county. They also had the girls individual cross country champ in Katie Harman.
--Katherine Dunn
Comments
If they're still using their "tech magnet" distinction as a tool to recruit from outside their district, as they did when I went to school in the county from 99-02, then it isn't nearly the feat you might imagine.
Posted by: ak | September 24, 2008 9:36 AM
I'm pretty sure that the Tech Magnet program has been replaced by a county-wide technology program. That being said, any accusations of recruiting by River Hill or Long Reach in the past didn't have much substance; the only dominant teams during that period (at RH) were the soccer teams, who were for the most part made up of in-district players, except for a few on the boys teams that Stara brought over from Centennial via the Magnet program. Still, the number of impact players that were "recruited" was pretty low.
Posted by: John | September 25, 2008 10:19 AM
The dominant River Hill soccer teams during the tech magnet days were most certainly NOT made up "for the most part" of in-district players. Each year those teams featured several key starters who were from different districts than River Hill. In fact, the opportunity to legally bring in players from the entire part of Howard County west of Rt. 29 (Long Reach had the same option with students east of Rt. 29) was a huge reason while Coach Bill Stara left Centennial and went to River Hill. I am not disrespecting Coach Stara or his accomplishments at all - I think he is an excellent coach - but River Hill was operating like a private school among public schools in those days.
Posted by: EC | September 26, 2008 9:46 AM
Marriotts Ridge beat RH, 3-1. Not quite the dominance we've all been hearing about.
Posted by: jd | October 7, 2008 8:59 PM