Losing. Nobody likes it. Whether it’s sports, video games, or even board games, competitive people still get upset, and they constantly strive to win. The athletic programs at Hancock High School have dealt with our fair share of losses over the 2022-23 seasons, but what is the issue? Is it the athletes, the coaching, the way the programs are set up, or maybe a mix of all of this?

Over the 22-23 season, HHS boys soccer went 0-21, boy’s basketball had a record of 2-23, and girl’s varsity volleyball had a record of 6-22. The girl’s softball and girls’ basketball teams also followed a similar pattern of statistics.

“I believe that next season we will be pretty good,” Rodney Martin MVP of the boy’s varsity basketball team said. Martin believes that it was just a bad season and that next year there will be improvement.

It has been years since HHS has seen a streak of losses this bad spanning almost every sport. These losses have frustrated the players, coaching staff, and HHS has been taken lightly by other schools when it comes to sports.

“I think our biggest struggle is the number of student athletes we have who are choosing not to participate in athletics,” Steve Kelly, athletic director of HHS said.

Kelly credits the struggle in athletics to a lack of players. Many of the sports teams at HHS only have varsity teams since the rosters do not have enough players to make junior varsity teams. Kelly said that if there is a 10% increase in participation in athletics yearly, then there will be full JV and Varsity teams within 5 years.

“If we are letting wins and losses be the single determining factor of the success of our programs, we are missing the point of athletics in the first place,” Kelly said.

It seems as if every team struggled with a variety of things, but in general, a lack of participation and experience was the issue.

However, the only team so far that has seen significant success is the HHS wrestling team. Having wrestlers Chloe Bradshaw, and Anthony Borghesi sent to state championships. The captain of the wrestling team Haider Waheed told us what made the team’s success so distinct.

“When you bring hard work to the practices it pays off,” Waheed said. “That is one thing that everyone on the wrestling team fully understands.”