Soccer, Volleyball Lead Fall Sports Successes

The Fall Sports season has been an eventful and successful one at MCSM. The Boys Varsity Soccer team won their Manhattan B-III division championship with an impressive 9-1-2 record. Their only loss, a 3-2 heartbreaker, came at the hands of division rival Eleanor Roosevelt after beating them earlier in the year by a 1-0 score. In the Class B playoffs, the Rams lost their own match to Campus Magnet by a final score of 2-1. Coach Peter Schmidt-Nowara’s team was led in the regular season by Juniors Joseth Leon (47 shots on goal, 8 goals, 3 assists) and Richard Bempong (34, 10, and 1) and Sophomore Mohamed Barry (35, 7, and 4) backed by the steady goal-tending of Junior Emman Kamara (85 saves, 13 goals allowed, 5 goals scored). Heavily loaded with Juniors and Sophomores, the Ram booters will certainly be front-runners next year.

On the Girls Volleyball front, Coach Brenda Jenkins led her lady diggers and spikers to an impressive 10-2 regular season record, finishing second in the Manhattan 8-B standings to George Washington HS. Both of the team’s losses came at the hands of that same George Washington team, but the Lady Rams tasted sweet revenge in the playoffs. Seeded 7th in Division B, MCSM opened with a two sets to zero victory over Campus Magnet and followed that with another 2-0 (25-18, 25-16) stomping on November 18 of their arch-rivals from George Washington, the second-seeded team in the tournament. On November 20, the Lady Rams playoff run unfortunately ended with a two sets to none (20-25, 18-25) loss to tournament third seed Benjamin Banneker.

The Girls Volleyball team was led this season by Seniors Jennifer Perez (51 aces, 82 service points, 7 assists, 5 blocks, 11 digs, 81 kills), Antoinette Nery (31 aces, 54 service points, 71 assists, 31 kills), Denae Howard (23 aces, 42 service points, 7 digs, 7 kills), Herminia Thabet (10 aces, 17 service points, 11 digs, 4 kills), Stephanie Lawrence (11 aces, 21 service points, 6 digs, 21 kills), and Venus Escobar (3 aces, 11 service points, 20 assists, 10 digs, 10 kills). Sophomores Christine Roundtree (14 aces, 20 service points, 13 digs, 37 kills) and Zi Qian Ng (26 aces, 61 service points, 11 assists, 8 digs, 6 kills) supported those six seniors in their successful season.

Congratulations are in order as well to the boys and girls who so ably represented MCSM this fall by participating on Coach Randolph Cantor’s Boys’ Bowling team (6-4 season record), Coach Mitchell Weinfeld’s Girls’ Bowling team (3-9), and Coach Luis Almanzar’s Cross Country team.