While Annandale has a lot of sports to offer, it does not have the immense variety of neighboring schools Lake Braddock and W.T. Woodson. In addition to the usual sports field hockey, football and volleyball, both schools also offer additional sports like ice hockey, crew and rifle.

“In order to have these sports at our school parents need to get together and form a booster club to support the financial part of it,” said Angelo Hilios. Adding an additional sport onto our sports program would raise economic issues, and would only work if students were willing to finance it.

Senior Jeremy Gillcash is one of many student athletes who plays a sport outside of school that is not offered within.

“If our school had a club hockey team that would be legit,” said Gillcash who travels at least 45 minutes to be part of the Prince William Panthers. “I guess it’s just not as popular around here.”

Students at W.T. Woodson are offered three sports that are not offered at any other school in the patriot district. Although ice hockey is not necessarily tied with the school due to the prices and danger involved with them, schools in the area have a club team that is officiated with the school.

“I wish our school had it. It would be something fun to do since ice hockey is the only sport I play,” said junior Matt Chiapanne. “It would give a chance for students who all like the same thing to interact and meet each other.” In addition to ice hockey, crew is another sport that the neighboring schools have.

“I wish that our school had crew, it would be really fun and definitely different than any other sports at our school,” said senior Caroline England.

Crew is currently not financed by the county because of the amount of money it requires. One shell, crew boat, is around $3,000 and would cost about $30,000 to start a program at Annandale. With the economic issues, you also need to find a good amount of people who are interested in the sport.

“About two years ago, two people wanted to start crew, but never followed through,” said Hilios. “It’s a lot of work, and usually the same students who are interested in crew also participate in other school sports, so financing it would be difficult.”

And so, while additional sports remain desirable at AHS, they are ultimately unattainable. Unless interest risks and funding increases, AHS will continue with its current regiment of sports.