By Soven Bery ’15, Staff Writer

There has been a lot of excitement and anxiety leading up the winter sports season, from both the community and the players themselves. The teams’ captains are confident in their respective teams and their abilities to compete. Without further ado, here is the

2011 Newark Academy Winter Sports Preview:

Boys Basketball: Look for the Minutemen to have a great year on the hardwood. The team expects to have a great season with star seniors Zaire Williams, Griffin Glatt, and Randall Keur leading the way and a strong group of juniors stepping up. With new coach James Wallace and the departure of some of the conference’s better teams (such as Millburn and Newark Central), the ceiling is nonexistent. NA was lucky to find Coach Wallace in the offseason, who last coached as an assistant at St. Peter’s College and has now taken up a career as a teacher.

Girls Basketball: The girls’ basketball team’s roster is short, very short. The team is comprised of a whopping eight players, yet will still be very competitive. “We are in a new conference and have a small team, but we’re going to work extremely hard this season. Most of the starters will be back with some solid incoming freshmen, so we should hopefully have a successful and more competitive year,” says senior Carly Gruenberg. She will be joined on the court by juniors Ahlia Bethea and Ashlyn Heller as well as sophomore Taylor Smith and freshmen Chloe Cubbage, Madeline DeLamielleure, Hernell Gabriel and Rachel Neiman.

Boys Swimming: The boys swimming team is also expecting a very successful season. Senior captains Shane Neibart and Ben Aiken comment, “We believe that this year might be our best season yet. Our juniors and seniors have really shown improvement these first few weeks of practices, which is indicative of their determination during the off-season. We are happy to see some new faces too and hope that some of the freshman and sophomores can step up and score some clutch points. You can count on the Men’s Swimming Team qualifying for the State Tournament and placing in the top 3 in our very tough conference.”

Girls Swimming: While it may be an uphill battle this year for the girls swimming team, they look to keep giving it their best effort and hopefully succeeding. Senior co-capitans Isabelle Jeng and Elizabeth Coscia agreed, “Although we lost a handful of valuable seniors, we gained strong new underclassmen swimmers who we believe will become assets to the team this year. Our record from last year saw a vast improvement, and we hope that with the new team, we can make it to states again.” Hopefully, the freshmen and sophomores will lead the team to glory down the road.

Boys Fencing: The boys fencing team is very confident heading into their season. “We’re expecting a strong season this year. We had a fairly strong season last year and only one person from the Men’s team graduated (Varsity Captain Jimmy Damiano). I personally have high hopes for our foil squad. I fully expect them to make squad states and believe that they will make the top 5 teams barring any injuries. Epee and Sabre are rebuilding this year. Hopefully we’ll see more Minutemen in State individuals this year,” says captain Alistair Murray ’12.

Girls Fencing: The Lady Minutemen are also looking for a strong season in the upcoming winter months. Captains Anne Tvetenstrand ’12 and Jackie Viola ’12 as well as Coach Ivanka Lucchetti will lead them through the season. “We’ve got some seniors who have been in the fencing program for a while, and many new freshmen.  My goal for this season is to help educate the newcomers so that the team will stay strong in the coming years,” says Tvetenstrand.

Wrestling: Last, but not least, the wrestling team also expects to enjoy a successful winter. “This year is going to be a very interesting one since there are new federated rules that claim we have completely new weight classes. For our team this doesn’t help since it takes a weight class away from the lower weights and adds a higher weight on a team that is almost all lower weights. However, we should see a lot of good results and medals from our team individually in the big tournaments. We have a lot of talent and a very young team with only one senior and there is a lot of room to grow all across the board,” says sophomore-wrestling phenomenon Pat Gerish ’14.