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2022-09-17 13:55:53 By : Ms. Gita Zhang

Few swimmers in the D.C. area have achieved more than Holton-Arms senior Sophie Duncan, so even after her team lost a competitive matchup with Stone Ridge at the Independent School League championships Friday, she could take stock of an especially successful stretch — adding wins in the 100-yard butterfly and 200 individual medley on top of an Olympic trial qualification and Stanford commitment in 2021.

It just took a few hurdles to get there.

A year earlier, in the middle of her push for a qualifying time, Duncan broke her wrist. She spent the following six weeks swimming and training with a waterproof cast, which offered practically no mobility in her wrist and impaired her technique. But it didn’t slow her enough, and just a couple of months after the cast came off, she qualified.

“It had always been a dream of mine, since I first started swimming. … This is basically the dream of any swimmer,” Duncan said. “It’s arguably one of the biggest meets there is besides the Olympics.”

Duncan is now focused on February’s Metro swimming championships, the final race of her high school career, as well as the season with Nation’s Capital Swim Club, where many of the medalists from the ISL championships also swim. At last weekend’s practice, she promised that she and the Stone Ridge swimmers were getting along.

“Our club coach always gets us fired up at practice by bringing up the Holton and Stone Ridge rivalry, so it definitely carries over to practice, too,” Duncan said with a laugh. “But no harsh feelings, no rubbing it in or anything like that.”

About two weeks ago, Blair wrestling coach Tim Grover sent his athletes a podcast, on which professional wrestlers talked about having an “alter ego” when they step on the mat. This idea seemed to inspire the Blazers.

Freshman Daniel Wu has started imagining himself as a powerful grizzly bear when he wrestles. For fellow freshman Jaden Cheung, “it’s like a Viking — and also a barbarian that’s on fire.”

“The whole concept of an alter ego, I find quite interesting and powerful,” Wu said. “And it doesn’t have to be in just sports. … It can be applied to many aspects of life.”

Cheung’s high school career was off to a slow start until recently, when he won 12 of his past 15 matches. Last weekend at Winters Mill’s Falcon Invitational, the 120-pounder took a commanding 10-1 lead on the Falcons’ Dalton Dwyer — who had defeated him earlier — in the first-place match, en route to collecting his first career title.

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Wu, who feels more calm and confident while envisioning himself as a big bear, reached the 106-pound championship in his first varsity tournament, where the former judoka held undefeated Chris Gaeng of Winters Mill close for much of the match.

The Blazers’ strong weekend continued as junior heavyweight Aaron Vernon — a 215-pounder who gives up as many as 70 pounds to his competition — took home a title.

“In the podium picture, there are two people next to him — it’s like the letter ‘M,’ ” Cheung said.

When Katherine Khramtsov lost a faceoff in her own zone late in the second period Wednesday, she shook her head and scrunched her face in disappointment. The Stone Ridge senior was determined to make up for her mistake. Moving with a vengeance, she regained control of the puck, skated into Georgetown Visitation’s zone and deposited it in the back of the net.

“I’m a little hard on myself sometimes,” Khramtsov said after the 10-7 win at Gardens Ice House in Laurel. “If a faceoff goes wrong, it could easily turn into a goal; that’s why I get upset with myself. It’s just the drive to win, the drive to succeed every single shift on the ice, every minute, every second, every play.”

Despite having two players defending her much of the night, the Princeton recruit scored six goals for Stone Ridge in a matchup between the area’s best girls’ teams. Sophomore Madeline Peppo also netted a hat trick for Stone Ridge.

“I think it was a great performance all around, especially for the team,” Khramtsov said. “It was great to have other goal scorers.”

Visitation’s traditionally deep squad was missing several key players. Sophomore standout Lucy Thiessen, who was matched up with Khramtsov during Visitation’s 11-9 win in December, was unable to play because of a positive coronavirus test, and captain Phoebe Heaps was out with an injury, forcing the Cubs to pull up a few junior varsity players.

“Obviously our entire game plan had to be dependent on containing Katherine Khramtsov,” Visitation Coach Conrad Rehill said, “but she’s just so good that once she gets the puck on her stick, there’s really nothing you can do about it.”

Desmond Dunham has a track record of winning championships and bringing top-tier competition to the sport. As the track and cross-country coach at St. John’s, Dunham helped create one of the most dominant local programs in recent years.

And in the fall he released his memoir, “Running Against the Odds,” in which Dunham writes that trophies are just a byproduct of the more important goals of sports: to motivate, educate and inspire young athletes.

“We all have problems in this world, and especially young folks,” Dunham said. “I just use that on a daily basis to try to motivate my athletes to dig in harder, to look at training as an opportunity and not an obligation, and bettering themselves and letting them know that how you do anything is how you do everything.”

Dunham can speak to how track can be an outlet. He recounts in the memoir a difficult upbringing, including a strained relationship with his father, as well as struggles with dyslexia and a speech impediment.

“It was something where I was able to harness all of my challenges that I was going through — it became just an amazing escape,” Dunham said. “It really just allowed me to bring a certain balance and calm to my world of chaos.”

As part of the memoir’s pre-sale campaign, Dunham partnered with Under Armour to donate a pair of running shoes or racing spikes to young athletes for each book sold. They donated 300 pairs of sneakers during that effort.

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