Winning anything at the state level is difficult, much less winning back to back. For our Scouts, winning seems to come naturally. After more than two decades of defeat for the ISHA State Championship, the Scouts pulled through with yet another win in a grueling battle against New Trier, beating them 8-5.
For many players this game will go down in the books as the most memorable moments of their life. For alumni Jack Walsh this game was more than just unforgettable.
“I remember the win very well. It was a great day in my life. I loved going to graduation after and just hanging with all my friends. It felt well earned and it was a good way to go out and leave behind a great legacy,” Jack Walsh said.
Nerves come with the game. Especially when the game happens to be one of the largest moments of your life. For some players, like alumni Marty Hippel, when the moment is at its peak, composure seems to take over.
“I feel like the more you play in big games, the more comfortable you feel in them, and I think that was the case. I still had nerves of excitement before the game, but once the game started, all the nerves just went away because you’re so focused on the game,” Hippel said.
Having an older team with majority seniors playing on the field, being a younger guy having the team on your back has to be stressful. For senior Thomas Walsh, there was no stress at all.
“I don’t think that there was a lot of pressure on me because I had a good team around me and good coaches and people who believed in me,” Thomas Walsh said.
Pressure is also a big part of the game. They key is turning pressure into something that will harness your team, and the Scouts did just that
“I thought there was more pressure to win it all this year because we had one the year before, and also personally because it was my senior year,” Hippel said. “We all wanted to go out on top, and I feel like that really motivated us.”
Watching the Scouts take down New Trier was a monumental accomplishment for the players but an even bigger sense of accomplishment for the parents that helped their sons get to this point.
“I would say I cared about the first win more because it was such a big accomplishment for the school and our team. The second win my dad definitely cared more because he felt complete after everything he did for me growing up and making me go to practices an hour away and taking me to tournaments every summer,” Jack Walsh said. “His job was done.”
At the end of the day the big moments are built around trusting your team and believing in the win not just hoping for it.
“Our group of guys had such good chemistry on and off the field, and that really helps more than you’d think in games like that. We all trusted each other, and even at halftime, we just had the mindset that there was no way we were losing that game,” Hippel said.
