Competitive local champions in 2023
• Farragut and area teams and individuals earning state or national honors featured the first-year HVA AeroHAWKS Aeronautics Team 1 beating roughly 800 competitors nationwide to earn a Rocketry national title in May. Team members were Otilia Colnic, Mickey Dandena, Bailey Mounts, captain Zaen Grissino-Mayer, Trey Harvey, Khalil Ortiz and Caleb Mulder. They earned a trip to Paris to compete in the world’s largest Rocketry Challenge in June.
• The defending girls soccer national champion Bearden Lady Bulldogs, who improved to 69-0-2 during the past three seasons, threepeated as Division I-AAA state champions in late October.
• Knoxville Catholic tennis senior Maeve Thornton finished her singles career unbeaten with three Division II-AA state titles, with CAK sophomore Allie Faulkner pulling off the same threepeat at the II-A girls singles level.
• The KCHS doubles team of junior Eleni Liakonis and sophomore Lillie Murphy won consecutive II-AA state doubles crowns.
• FHS boys cross country again was dominant in winning the program’s second straight Division 1-AAA cross country title in early November.
• HVA junior wrestler Ella Murphey finished her third season as an undefeated three-time girls state champ, doing so in the 185 class the past two seasons with a perfect 51-0 overall record entering her senior campaign.
• Farragut sophomore Bryce Thompson earned a Division I-AAA state tile in shot put in May.
• FHS chess team won a state title among a 14-team field in March led by individual state champ and National Master James Nguyen.
• Knoxville Catholic won state championships for the first time in girls basketball and baseball.
• One family from Farragut produced a state champ in girls 1600 run (II-AA) as a freshman (Carolina Areheart/Webb) plus an Elementary level state title (third through fifth grade) in boys cross country from West Areheart, a Concord Christian School fifth-grader.
• Other school state champs were FMS boys cross country; FHS and Bearden dance teams; and Webb School high school girls in cross country.
