Hawken returns five district qualifiers and one state qualifier from last season and, with the addition of several talented freshmen, the Hawks are eager to compete this spring.
“I believe we will be very competitive and will prove ourselves as the season progresses,” said Hawken coach Brian Smallwood. “We are fortunate that we have some very good freshmen who have come out for the team this year. It certainly makes our depth chart look promising.”
Returning for the Hawks are sophomore Behrend Diderich, a state qualifier last spring, and seniors Praveen Kumar, Ryan Levine, and Finn Rourke. All three seniors qualified for the district meet last season along with junior Ashwin Balakrishnan.
Senior Ishan Vyas and junior Rohan Desai and freshmen Zach Forte, Axel Neely, Tyler Snyder, Matt Yang, and Anthony Piazza also will vie for playing time this spring.
“We have new team dynamics with the addition of the new freshmen,” Smallwood said. “We will attempt to jell as a squad and figure out how to work together.”
With several new faces in the lineup, Smallwood hopes to use that as an advantage, especially early in the season, as his new players hit the cour.t
“Many of our new players are unknown to the rest of the league,” he said. “It will be interesting to see how our new players stack up against other teams.”
