WAJ Girls Win New York State Championship

An historic journey to Gore Mountain was taken by Windham-Ashland-Jewett coaches and skiers (left to right) head coach Reggie Willcocks, racers Sophia Garzone, John Garzone, Devin Schlosser, Gianna Garzone, Erin Klein, Piper Cohane and assistant coach Olivia Drum.

Windham-Ashland-Jewett school boys and girls ski teams (front left to right) Jackson Storms, Olivia Storms, Gianna Garzone, Erin Klein, Piper Cohane, Megan Carroll, Sophia Garzone, Kylie Jordan-Bell, Lilliane O’Brien and (back, left to right) John Garzone, Devin Schlosser, Leo Klein and James Garrison.

WINDHAM - The mathematics of the situation had everything and nothing to do with the New York State championship won, this winter, by the Windham-Ashland-Jewett girls’ alpine ski team.

Traveling to Gore Mountain, February 24 & 25, the lady Warriors made the trip home with, well, it’s a long story but, long story short, Piper Cohane, Gianna Garzone, Sophia Garzone and Erin Klein are Numero Uno.

Scholars of the slopes. Wizards of the slippery sticks. Small town snow specialists. Slalom and giant slalom virtuosos. The best.

No matter how you phrase it, they are now among the immortals in school sports lore, not to mention maybe the smartest tabulators ever.

No disrespect to Nathan Hoyt, a onetime standout athlete and current math teacher at WAJ, or any of the district’s other arithmetic instructors.

The point being, the rest of the story is, as the lady Warriors were leaving Gore Mountain, they believed, by their calculations, they were #1. 

Officials with the New York State Public High School Athletic Association told them different, that they had finished in second place.

It was close, merely a point behind Shenendehowa and Mamaroneck who were tied, but close only counts in horseshoes, as the saying goes.

No matter how anybody else had it figured, the lady Warriors were convinced they were champions, and not in a conciliatory way.

And as it turned out, they were on the money, two days later receiving a phone call from State officials saying an error had occurred.

WAJ was in fact dead even with the other two big schools and a State title has been added to their Delaware League and Section IV crown.

It is the first statewide crown captured by the lady Warriors but nobody is counting, well, actually, yes they are which is how the whole mixup unfolded in the first place (no irony intended).

“We honestly thought we finished the same as the other two schools but based on what we were being told, we couldn’t be sure,” says WAJ assistant coach Olivia Drum.

Somehow, between entering equations into Excel and auto-populating the data, or whatever, there was a glitch in the system.

“We haven’t gotten the full grasp of exactly what happened but we’ll take the win, the school gets a trophy and the State plaque,” Drum says.

“And the blue signs at the end of town that let everyone know about the boys championship in 2013 have to be updated,” Drum said, smiling.

State officials did the best that could be done, making the situation right, and will take it a step further, journeying to Windham for a special presentation.

Before the corrective call came in, “we were pretty happy to finish third, which is technically how it would have been listed,” Drum says.

“We wished we would have skied better and said to ourselves, ‘we’ll get it next year,’ Drum says, with many young skiers returning.

“When we got the call, the girls erupted,” Drum says, a feeling shared by head coach Reggie Willcocks and Chip Seamans, president of the Windham Mountain Club.

The local ski center provides unlimited access to the slopes, an opportunity and a privilege WAJ students, over the years, have put to superlative use.

Piper Cohane, a junior, placed in the top 10 individually for both slalom and giant slalom. Total team points are determined by combining the top three scores among the four skiers.

John Garzone and Devin Schlosser competed for the boys alpine team at States, with Sophia Garzone, an 8th grader, being the youngest.