Sustaining the Academic-Athletic Mix: Future Plans for North Shore Athletics

EARLIER:

In 2011, the boys basketball team won its first ever regional championship. Not to be outdone, the baseball team captured its first regional championship as well, breaking a 92-year drought.

But it was football’s historic regular season that brought the school community to a frenzy last fall. North Shore won eight games to start the year before falling to Mooseheart in the final week. The raiders earned a No. 6 seed in the Class 1A playoffs and earned the school’s first playoff win since 1999 with a 28-24 victory over Flanagan-Cornell at home.

“The atmosphere was incredible; we had a great turnout,” said Steve Smith, North Shore’s senior quarterback. “A lot of the student body came out and supported us; a lot of people around the town came out. We actually had not had an atmosphere like that and it was really great to see.”

In recent years North Shore has reached an unparalleled level of athletic success, but Pat McHugh and the athletic department constantly finesse and tweak the system to better support the school’s athletic teams. McHugh started his own blog where he posts photos, results and writes about his own philosophies on training and athletics. The school’s administration started putting together a biweekly online newsletter that is sent out to the school community, linking to articles from the local press. 

“[The newsletter] was something that was not done 10 years ago,” said Art Jessen, who works in North Shore’s communications department. “We’ve started doing it this season because of the success of the football team; people are more interested in what’s going on and what’s being said in the external universe around some of the athletic teams.”

No team deserved more publicity than the golf team after winning the state championship.

Five of the Raiders’ six varsity golfers plan to return next season, making the Raiders one of the early favorites to win the 2012 state title. It’s a position that is unfamiliar for most at North Shore, but it’s not something they plan to shy away from. It’s part of a different mentality, one that’s taken time to develop.

“We’ve raised the bar to the ultimate level,” Joe Bosco said. “The goal is that we start to cultivate a culture of high-level competitive golf here at North Shore.”

“I know this year we are going to be working a lot harder in the winter and summer,” Nick McCall said. “Honestly, we have it in our sights and we think we can do it.”

With more athletes at North Shore becoming serious about off-season training, McHugh hired Mark Medhurst to be the school’s Sports Performance Coach in September. Medhurst, who runs North Shore Performance, his own personal training company, works with all the teams on the field and in the weight room. In the winter, he’ll start developing programs for out-of-season athletes looking to prepare for spring sports.

“I want to help them become better athletes, move faster and be more powerful,” Medhurst said. “Most of our kids play more than one sport so you have to keep them on top of that, allowing them to be at their best depending on whatever season it is. Really training an athlete as opposed to training sport-specific.”

That mindset of preparation has permeated into many of North Shore’s teams. Smith said he and a group of football teammates consistently worked out on their own during the offseason at EFT Sports Performance in Highland Park. They got together and watched game film from the 2010 season as early as February, six months before the football season started. This type of thing wasn’t happening at North Shore even five years ago. Now, it has become almost standard.

With all that has changed at North Shore in the last 17 years, McHugh says it was never solely about winning championships. He realizes that athletic success at a small school like North Shore can be cyclical, depending heavily on participation numbers. Although North Shore’s baseball team went on to win a regional title last year, they were close to not even having enough players to field a team at the beginning of the season.   

The recent achievements of North Shore’s athletic teams are impressive and McHugh surely envisions more success in the future. But he recognizes there is still a balance to be maintained at North Shore.

“For some people, in sports you can learn about yourself more than in the classroom,” McHugh said. “There is something about this academic-athletic mix that’s really important for our community and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do.”

"Like" us on Facebook.