Rye Country Day School’s boys varsity hockey team has won its first Fairchester Athletic Association Tournament in five years, beating its final opponent 7-1 in a championship game last month that was especially meaningful to the team’s seniors.

“We had never won a playoff game in our entire high school careers, despite routinely finish-ing the regular season near the top of the league,” senior co-captain Aidan McIntosh said after the Feb. 24 victory over Hamden Hall Country Day School of Hamden, Conn. “However, we knew that this team was something special. To see all of this effort culminate in a title meant the world to us.”

This season’s run to the championship, the team’s first since 2019, was led by first-year Coach Steve Forzaglia and assistant coaches Anthony Felice, Pete Smith and Rob Striar (a 1990 RCDS graduate).

“I wanted to bring in some structure to practices and a team-first mentality,” Forzaglia said. “We spent the first half of the season teaching a team game and trying to build a team-first culture, [and] I attribute a lot of the change to the senior captains. I believe we surpassed what some people pre-dicted the team would do.”

Following a devastating semi-finals loss to St. Luke’s in over-time at last year’s FAA tourna-ment, the RCDS team was in disarray. With much of their on-ice production graduating, trans-ferring or ineligible to play, the Wildcats entered this season with only 12 returning varsity players. With a brand-new coaching staff, a new system and game plan, and a young squad – one including eight freshmen and eighth-grader Alex Thompson – it was initially considered a rebuilding year.

But as senior captains McIntosh and Ewan Ward sought to develop a new team culture, they were soon joined as captains by two more seniors – Patrick Leonard in early December and Andrew Zhang in January – because of the two players’ out-standing leadership.

“Our goal at the start of the season was to build a strong foun-dation for the future of the pro-gram,” Leonard recalled after winning the championship, played under the lights in Norwalk, Conn. “Luckily for us, the future wound up being a lot sooner than we had ever anticipated.”

Leonard set the tone for the title match at the SoNo Ice House with the first and only score of the opening period, thanks to an assist from freshman Jacob Tucznio. The Wildcats shut out Hamden Hall in the second period while adding two more goals of their own. By the time the final buzzer sounded, the entire team was ready to rush the ice and celebrate the 7-1 score. 

The team’s younger players were dominant on the ice: Freshman Paul Heintz and eighth-grader Alex Thompson each scored two goals, while the remaining two came from co-captain Zhang and sophomore Richie Morrow. Defensively, junior goalie Ari Israel had 25 saves to seal the victory. “

At the beginning of the year, everyone counted us out,” said Israel, who had a breakout year in goal and, during the two-game tournament, allowed only two scores from 56 shots. He said he was driven in part by the seniors’ desire to make the playoffs. “I knew that, if I had an off day, it could mean the last time the seniors on my team would put on their jerseys.” 

A turning point for the team during the regular season came after a bad loss to last-place Kingswood Oxford School that capped a three-game losing streak. The captains sought help from assistant coach Felice, who had a simple but effective suggestion: Rearrange the locker-room seating chart, which nudged the players into getting comfortable with everyone else on the team, not just their close friends.

Following the seating make-over, the team caught fire and went on a six-game win streak, including a 3-2 revenge victory against St. Luke’s and a 4-3 win in an overtime thriller against King School on Winter Wildcat Weekend. 

By the end of the season, the Wildcats had slid from first to third place in the FAA standings due to sickness, fatigue, and injury. As a result, their tournament semifinal match was on the road against the No. 2 seed, King School — the back-to-back defending champions. Despite having fallen to King 9-1 a few weeks earlier, the Wildcats won 4-1 to advance to the finals. 

“Winning the [championship] game was much more than winning a trophy — it was cementing our legacy, honoring and recognizing the team’s hard work and dedication,” said Leonard, whose 50-point showcase season consisted of 12 goals and 38 assists. “Every player bought in and played a role, no matter their role on the team. The team worked collectively to achieve their dream together.”

WRESTLING

The RCDS wrestling team finished second in the Private Schools Athletic Association league, behind Long Island Lutheran Middle & High School, also known as LuHi. It also placed seventh at the New York State Association of Independent Schools Athletic Association’s annual championships. Senior Rhodes Boester led the team in wins this season with a record of 17-2; he also was named to the Fairchester Athletic Association’s All League Wrestling Team and was ranked third in his weight class at the NYSAIS tournament. Sophomore Harry Moss and eighth-grader Oliver Schwartz each finished fourth in their weight classes at NYSAIS. “Although no one is headed to the Federation State Tournament, we had a lot of individual success on the team this season,” Coach Richard Knazik said, “and we look forward to next year.”

BASKETBALL

Coach Keith Gelardi of the RCDS boys basketball program is proud of the team’s work this year. “We would obviously want to have more wins. However, our players competed through adversity. They never quit on each other and they never gave up. To me, that’s a success.” The team’s win-loss record was 7-14 as they entered the NYSAIS tournament; they won the first playoff game on Feb. 23 against Trinity in a last-second thriller, 48-45, but were eliminated two days later when they lost to Fieldston School, 56-36. … The girls basketball team, led by Coach Russell Tombline, compiled a 7-11 win-loss record heading into the NYSAIS tournament; they won the first-round game, 44-30, against York Prep, but lost the second game to Poly Prep by a score of 45-42.

TRACK 

Eighth-grader Marshall Brown ran a personal best and set a school record as the first RCDS varsity runner to break the 3 min-ute 40 second barrier in a 1,000-meter race. He set the record at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association’s 2024 Championships on March 2 in Staten Island; his time of 2:39.07 placed him third in his heat and 22nd overall among all of those competing. Notably, he was the only eighth-grader in any of the distance events at the championships. Early in the season, Brown was ranked No. 1 in the country among eighth graders in the 1,000 meter, the 1,600 meter and the mile. This week-end, he expects to be competing at the 2024 New Balance Nationals Indoor high school track and field championships in Boston.