New Team Room for Student-Athletes Opens as Director of Athletics Tim Kohs Celebrates Decade of Leading Program It has been a remarkable decade of progress for student athletes and the roster of athletic programs at Mercy High School—reflected most visibly in a steady stream of state championships, vastly improved facilities, and greater attention to the health and safety of the scores of students who participate in a full menu of competitive sports.
This year, the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Director of Athletics Tim Kohs at Mercy, coincided with the latest in a series of milestones— the debut of a new Team Room for student-athletes, with top-notch facilities that reflect the quality and caliber of the school’s programs. “We strive to provide our athletes a high level experience both on and off the court,” explained Kohs, reflecting on the latest step forward. “The student athletes have a tremendous work ethic and the socialization that the Team Room affords is how you build a team— the kids hang out together, become friends, and that enriches everything about their experience at Mercy.” A member of the Southern Connecticut Conference of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, Mercy fields 25 teams across the calendar, and has earned 11 Championships in recent years and seen many noteworthy individual performances. The Mercy Tigers have become synonymous with solid preparation, exemplary teamwork, and unwavering dedication—along with tremendous skill and unrelenting work ethic. The Fall athletics roster includes Cheerleading, Cross Country, Field Hockey, Soccer, Swimming and Diving, and Volleyball. Winter athletics include Basketball, Cheerleading, Gymnastics, Ice Hockey and Indoor Track. Spring athletics include Golf, Lacrosse, Softball, Tennis and Track. Some of the interscholastic sports have both Junior Varsity and Varsity teams pursing competitive schedules. Throughout the athletics program, girls can improve their physical abilities and knowledge of sports, learn teamwork and leadership, and promote responsibility and fair play. And they do.
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WOMEN OF MERCY Living Catherine’s Vision
It has been ten years of incremental progress at Mercy, as stand-out results on the field have been matched by steady improvements to the athletics program. Kohs, working closely with the Mercy administration, has been a leading catalyst and donors and supporters of the athletics program have been instrumental in accomplishing much-needed upgrades. Among the more significant advances was the hiring of a full-time athletic trainer, in what had been a part-time position. That change, eight years ago, meant that a trainer would be present to assess, treat, prevent and rehab injuries, as well as providing training to coaches in CPR and First Aid. Beyond that, Kohs explained, a full-time trainer enables athletes to be “treated by a person that has a grasp on their individual personalities and pain tolerances, gets to know the students,” and is there to “assess, treat, and rehab injuries daily.” In addition, along the way relatively little things have gone a long way towards stepping up the overall caliber of the athletics program. Bringing in a temporary scoreboard when two different sports were playing on adjacent fields, as was done about seven years ago, or putting up a temporary fence to reduce the number of balls from one sport that interrupted play when they crossed into another field, were positive steps. Establishing a rotation in which all teams are outfitted with new uniforms every five or six years, as was also done midway through the past decade, was a noteworthy achievement. The past decade also saw the addition of a gymnastics program beginning with the 2015–16 year, along with a co-op hockey program that was initiated with Northwest Catholic. Although a new gym was built at Mercy just over a decade ago, limited funds at the time precluded construction of locker rooms. Thus, for much of the past decade, the lack of a formal locker room meant that a relatively small and somewhat cramped space beyond the auditorium stage did double-duty as a team space before, during and after games. Although that space was upgraded through the years, it still fell short of a comfortable, quality, invigorating team facility. That changed this year.
