Now that the class of 2023 has left, the class of 2024 is on the rise. However, as we look back on the year, it seems like the athletes in the class of 2024 have already risen. Across a multitude of sports in the B-CC program, juniors have been playing the best on many of our teams this past school year.  With the class of 2024’s senior season coming up, next year’s teams look to be strong. 

The girl’s soccer team rostered fourteen juniors, having the majority of their starting eleven be juniors. On the wrestling team, the juniors were also the primary chunk of their starters. The captain of wrestling, junior Seth Weaver, said, “Last season, we had one senior on our varsity starting lineup of 14 wrestlers. We had five juniors, seven sophomores, and one freshman, so I think the future is bright for our program as our upperclassmen will have more varsity experience in the future” 

Girls’ Lacrosse, boys’ lacrosse, and girls’ basketball all rostered more juniors than seniors as well. Many of the sports led by seniors, like boys’ soccer, boys’ lacrosse, and boys’ basketball, lost in the first round of the playoffs. The only boys’ sport this year to win a playoff game was boys’ baseball, which only had one senior play in the playoffs. In the one playoff game they won, it was a junior who had the game-winning hit. In boys baseball’s loss in the regional semifinals, seven of the 10 men to take the field were juniors, two were sophomores, and only one was a senior. 

This spring, baseball rostered eleven juniors, with only five seniors on the team. One of baseball’s tops players this year was junior pitcher Bobby Burk, who was the best hitter and pitcher for the Barons during the season. He said, “Although the seniors are important, the juniors carried this season.” In addition to this, girls’ softball also had more juniors than seniors, and their best hitter was junior Alex Wedemeyer.

In regards to the field hockey team, senior Captain Lea Shweiki said, “Oona was crucial to the success of our team this year. Her intensity brought our team to another level, and we would have been a different team without her.” Junior Oona Buckley was a captain of the team, along with being the team’s leading scorer. This trend of juniors being captains is not limited to the field hockey team, yet it was common among most sports this year. In every season, the majority of teams had junior captains, with many having more than one as illustrated by the football team with captains Seth Weaver and Carson Griffey, both of whom are juniors.

In a place where seniors usually lead the teams, many juniors held leadership roles. Obviously, seniors have a great impact on the younger classes, and the seniors have many athletes playing at the next level. However with such a strong junior class, many teams aren’t losing many starters and will look to use the experience they have gathered this year to make some runs deep into playoff runs next year.