Editor's note: A paragraph has been added to this story to include information about Cavaliers football alumni Blake Johnson and Andrew Hawkes.
When W.H. Croxford High School’s teachers first started recruiting students for the nascent school’s sports teams nine years ago, it took a bit of time to develop interest among the student body.
Athletics coordinator Jared Fuller said it was often, quite literally, a case of approaching students on campus and convincing them to join a team.
“We didn’t have enough to field a volleyball team, so just grabbed people in the hallways who were tall and said, ‘Come on, you’re going to play,’” Fuller recalled. “They then said, ‘But I don’t know anything about volleyball!’ And we said, ‘That’s fine, we’ll teach you.’
“We basically had a hockey team playing volleyball on the boys’ side, just so that we could have a team.”
Fast-forward nine years, with upwards of 80 or 90 W.H. Croxford students commonly trying out for a single Cavaliers sports team, those early recruitment challenges are perhaps hard to imagine. These days, Fuller said over 270 students – more than one-fifth of the school’s student population – compete for one or more of the Cavaliers sports programs.
“There are very few teams we don’t run tryouts for anymore,” he said. “Our most popular teams are junior girls’ volleyball and junior boys’ basketball. We almost had 100 kids try out for boys’ basketball this year and it was similar for girls’ volleyball. And they’re fighting for just 12 spots, so it’s getting to be harder [to make the team] and for the coaches to pick the teams, as well.”
That growth has led to a high school that is now, quite frequently, able to contend for banners and championships at the divisional, zone, and even provincial level. Despite still being less than a decade old, the Cavaliers athletics department has managed to establish itself as a valid and consistent competitor in the Rocky View Sports Association (RVSA) – the sports league for the Rocky View Schools Division – as well as the 4A South Central Zone.
In addition to those accolades, the school is also churning out a steady stream of graduating student-athletes who are plying their trade at higher levels of competition.
Fuller, who has taught at W.H. Croxford since the school first opened in southwest Airdrie back in 2014, knows all too well the many steps that were taken to grow the young high school’s athletics department. He credits the hard work done by his predecessor, Carol Smith, in paving the way for the program’s current success.
He also applauds the school's dedicated roster of teachers and community coaches, whose volunteering commitments allow the school to continue offering extra-curricular programming.
Humble beginnings
Back when W.H. Croxford first opened in 2014 (originally as a grade 9 and 10 school) Fuller said the Cavaliers were represented athletically by two junior varsity volleyball teams, a cross-country team, a golf team, two basketball teams, a badminton team, and a track-and-field team.
According to Fuller, approximately 50 W.H. Croxford students competed for the school’s sports teams in that first year. That was still a decent percentage of their student population, he noted, as the new school’s enrolment was only 300 or so students at the time.
W.H. Croxford grew quickly, however. In 2015, the school added Grade 11 classes, and then the following year, those students became the school’s first graduating class. By 2016, the school was, like the other three high schools in Airdrie, a grade 9 to 12 school.
The enrolment has ballooned in the years since, and W.H. Croxford is now Airdrie’s largest public school, with an enrolment of over 1,300 students. That number is only expected to go up in the coming years, as more residential subdivisions are developed on the west side of the city, in W.H. Croxford’s catchment zone.
“Every year we’ve been open, we’ve essentially added 100 to 150 kids each year,” Fuller said.
While such growth can be a challenge for Rocky View Schools as a whole, one positive result of the rapid expansion is that as W.H. Croxford continued to grow, so too did the Cavaliers’ athletics department. After the school’s fairly humble athletics origins, W.H. Croxford teams for other sports, like rugby and curling, started to emerge, and the athlete pool to recruit from became larger.
“My rugby coach actually told me we’re the first Airdrie school to consistently run a rugby team, so we’ve actually taken on people from George Mac and Bert Church just because they weren’t always able to field a team,” Fuller said. “We’ve run rugby every year since 2017.”
Fuller cited the rapid enrolment increase, first and foremost, as the catalyst for Croxford’s growing competitiveness in most of the RVSA’s leagues. “The first year, we had under 300 students and were just telling kids to be a part of our programs,” he said. “Now we have 1,350, give or take a few, so the player pool is just way bigger.
“It’s not like we’ve added any extra positions either, so it’s not like we can offer three junior basketball teams because we have enough interest. It’s still just one entry into the RVSA.”
Fuller said the Cavaliers won their first banner – an RVSA junior varsity boys’ volleyball championship – in 2015. Before long, the school’s sports teams added a few other banners to the gymnasium wall, including an RVSA senior boys' volleyball banner in 2017, and an RVSA junior girls' basketball banner in 2019.
But what many of W.H. Croxford’s sports teams quickly learned is that it was going to take time to establish a sense of competitiveness against the other public high-school sports teams in Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere, and Rocky View County.
For example, the Cavaliers’ girls’ soccer team didn’t win any games during their first two seasons. Croxford’s fledgling football team, similarly, struggled to string together wins in both 2016 and 2017, after being a practice-only squad in 2014 and competing strictly in exhibition games in 2015.
But inch-by-inch and year-by-year, the school began to produce sports teams with more of a winning culture that were able to fight for victories and titles against their divisional rivals.
In 2018, the W.H. Croxford girls’ soccer team finished in fourth place of the seven-team RVSA, after losing to the Springbank Phoenix in the third-place game. It was, by all accounts, the team’s most successful season to date. Though the players didn’t get to hang medals around their necks, head coach Laural Kuntz said it was a huge step for the Cavaliers to finally win some games in 2018 – something they hadn’t been able to achieve up until that point.
“The willingness to keep going until the end – that’s what our team is about,” she told the Airdrie City View at the time.
Croxford lost that bronze-medal game 3-1, netting a consolation goal in the final few minutes. Their goal-scorer on that play was Shanice Alfred – an elite-level soccer player who’d later go on to play university soccer for the MacEwan University Griffins, as well as for the Guyanese women’s national team.
Alfred was one of the first Cavaliers student-athletes to make the move up to a higher level of competition upon graduating from high school but she was by no means the last. Since W.H. Croxford's first graduating class walked the stage in 2016, dozens of Cavaliers have gone on to play sports at the post-secondary or junior level.
Fuller said he was able to compile a list of 35 Croxford alumni who have done just that, and he assumes that’s not an exhaustive compilation.
Many of the athletes on Fuller’s list have been featured in the City View over the years, such as NCAA lacrosse player Nolan Oakey, Canada Winter Games medallist and biathlete Thomas Hulsman, National Ringette League player Kennedy Rice, hockey player Ryan Straschnitzki, and golf/hockey player Ty Petrie.
More recent graduates who have progressed to higher levels in their respective sports include University of Calgary soccer player Mykena Walker – who managed to nail down a starting role in her first year with the Dinos in 2022 – and fellow U of C recruit Daisy Olsen, who enjoyed similar success with the Dinos’ women’s volleyball team last year.
In her Grade 12 year, Olsen was a star player for the Cavaliers’ senior girls’ volleyball team, helping the Croxford squad secure the silver medal in both the RVSA division and the 4A South Central Zones tournament in 2021.
A four-year member of the Cavaliers’ girls’ volleyball teams, Olsen said she noticed as she progressed through her high-school career that her school was becoming stronger athletically – not just in volleyball, but other sports as well.
“I think the program was pretty small when I started out,” the Cavaliers alumna recalled in March 2023. “Not a lot of people knew each other and it was a bunch of different people from different [junior high] schools. But I could see as I went through my four years that it was growing a lot.
“I think it was a really good experience there. The program is definitely growing and it’s super awesome to see. I got to make my mark at Croxford and now I see where it’s going and can be excited about all the stuff they’re doing.”
W.H. Croxford’s senior girls’ volleyball team is one of the multiple examples of the recent rapid development of the school’s athletics department. In 2022, the senior girls’ team followed up with another successful season, once again falling just short of a berth in the 4A provincial championships.
The girls' curling team at W.H. Croxford also experienced success in 2022. The Cavaliers – comprised of Grade 11 Danica Pirart (skip), Grade 12 Jordan Frankiewitz (third), Grade 11 Karina Patayanikorn-Fithen (second), and Grade 12 Valeria Gutierrez (lead) – won the South Central Zone banner to qualify for provincials this March.
They then won two of their four matches at the provincial bonspiel in St. Paul to end their season as the fifth strongest high-school girls' curling team in Alberta.
“I think it’s finding its footing,” Olsen said of the Cavaliers' athletics department. “New schools, it can be hard to start out, but as it’s growing into a bigger school, there’s definitely a lot more talent there now.”
A senior girls’ basketball dynasty
While their volleyball, curling, and rugby teams have occasionally struck gold, the Cavaliers team that has arguably made the biggest name for the school’s athletics department in the last few years is the senior girls’ basketball team. Coached by Diane Hilko, the team is currently in the midst of an RVSA dynasty that shows no signs of slowing down.
Hilko, the team’s head coach, has played a key role in the team’s dominance in the last few years. A teacher by trade, Hilko brought to the Cavaliers an extensive basketball resume that included an illustrious post-secondary career in Ontario with the Brock Badgers.
A five-year member of the Badgers’ basketball team back in the 1970s and '80s, Hilko was named Brock’s athlete of the year in 1978-79. She was also named to four league all-star teams and received three most valuable player awards. She was inducted into Brock’s athletics hall of fame in 2001.
The Cavaliers won their first senior girls’ basketball banner in February 2020, when they beat the Bow Valley Bobcats 69-60 in the RVSA championship game.
“There was screaming, loud cheering, tears – it was really cool,” said Taylor Grant, a Cavaliers teacher-coach that season. “The players really supported each other on the bench. When the players weren’t on the court, they were really loud. We had a huge fan base at the game – there were a lot of people there to support Croxford.”
That raucous support from their peers became a calling card for W.H. Croxford's sports teams, according to Fuller. He said the student body has done a great job of cheering on their fellow classmates from the bleachers, regardless if they themselves are members of a Cavaliers sports team or not.
That support has extended to the southwest Airdrie community as a whole, Fuller added.
“We’ve really tried creating an atmosphere in our gym and making our school a hub [for entertainment],” he said. “Over here in the southwest of Airdrie, there really isn’t too much to do for young people. The skate park is nearby, but other than that, there’s not a mall or anything.
“For our community, we’re kind of the biggest building in the southwest, and we’ve tried to make it [a destination]. Our home games for basketball, we sometimes get 500 people in the gym, cheering the teams on and just being passionate in the community.”
With their school community at their back, W.H. Croxford’s senior girls’ basketball team prepared to extend their 2020 post-season by competing at the ensuing 3A South Central Zone championships.
However, before they had the chance to compete at the zones tournament, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought high-school sporting competitions to an abrupt and indefinite halt. Croxford’s high-school athletes were forced to wait over a year, until the 2021-22 school year, before inter-school competition was finally permitted once again.
Nonetheless, once sports were finally back, Croxford’s senior girls’ basketball team managed to pick up exactly where they’d left off, and the Cavaliers won the RVSA banner for the second consecutive time in 2022.
Led by Grade 12 captain Macy Mulholland – who went on to play post-secondary basketball for the SAIT Trojans in Calgary – the Cavaliers marched to an unbeaten season in the RVSA. The Cavaliers boasted both the division's strongest offence and defence in 2021-22, outscoring their opponents 360-136 in their five games, registering an average of 72 points per game and allowing an average of just 27.2 points per game.
However, despite this dominance, Croxford then fell agonizingly short of a berth at the 4A provincial tournament by finishing second at the ensuing South Central Zones tournament.
A year later, the Cavaliers achieved the RVSA three-peat in March of this year, dominating virtually every local team they faced throughout the 2022-23 season. Under Hilko's guidance, W.H. Croxford secured their third consecutive division title after beating the George McDougall Mustangs 63-47 in the championship game.
“The girls are very excited and enthusiastic,” Hilko said. “They’ve bought in and work hard. As we work with them to try and get them to become better athletes and basketball players, they’re just excited about it. It’s fun to watch them grow.”
The victory over their west Airdrie rivals capped off what had been another stellar regular season for the Cavaliers senior girls' team. Dominating the RVSA, the Cavaliers outscored their opponents 400-199 across their six regular-season games. They also competed in six weekend tournaments around the province, making the podium in all of them.
Making matters even more impressive was that they only had a few seniors on the roster, which was mostly comprised of Grade 11 athletes.
As evidence of the team’s dominance, many of the Cavaliers basketball squad also played basketball competitively away from school. Senior Tana Layton was a member of Team Alberta's gold-medal-winning squad at the 2022 Canada Summer Games, while Jemaya Chinyelugo was on the Alberta U15 girls' provincial team.
“The girls are very committed, they work hard, and they bought in,” Hilko said. “It’s been a wonderful experience.”
Football team shows growth
In 2016, the Cavaliers’ football team – which had been created as a practice-only squad back in 2014, due to the team featuring just Grade 9 and 10 students at the time – officially entered the RVSA.
Finally, W.H. Croxford’s football players had the opportunity to compete against the division’s other, more established programs, like the Cochrane Cobras and Chestermere Cowboys (later renamed the Lakers). There was also the opportunity to establish local rivalries with the likes of the George McDougall Mustangs and Bert Church Chargers, who for years had vied for local bragging rights via the annual 'Airdrie Bowl' game.
The team's early growing pains were evident though, as the Cavaliers struggled to find a winning formula in 2016 or 2017.
However, the team truly announced itself in 2018, in their third year of competition. Led by a crop of experienced Grade 12 players and a team of dedicated coaches, the Cavaliers finished the season with a respectable 4-4 record.
Later that school year, in June of 2019, four of the Cavaliers' graduating players signed commitment letters to go play junior (U21) football for teams in the British Columbia Football Conference (BCFC). The foursome included receivers Jamal Bacchus and Nolan Phillips, quarterback Keagan Henderson, and defensive back Keegan Proudlock. Bacchus, Henderson, and Phillips signed for the Nanaimo-based Vancouver Island Raiders, while Henderson committed his future to the Okanagan Sun, in Kelowna.
Bacchus was also Airdrie's sole participant in that year's Football Alberta Senior Bowl – an all-star game pitting select teams from southern Alberta and northern Alberta against each other. The two teams are comprised of the province's top Grade 12 players.
The BCFC signings in 2019 marked one the first times that members of the Cavaliers football team made the jump up to a higher level of competition – a testament to how far the team had come in the three years since Croxford first fielded a team in the RVSA. The four players had been with the W.H. Croxford football program since its inception four years previous, and they represented the first graduating class to play for the team throughout their entire high-school careers.
Before that, 2017 graduates Blake Johnson and Andrew Hawkes had been the program's first alumni to move onto higher levels of football. Johnson signed for the Calgary Colts and played in the Prairie Football Conference for two years before moving to Vancouver Island to play for the VI Raiders. Hawkes, who attended high school in Calgary but played for the Cavaliers football team, later played for the London Beefeaters junior team in the Ontario Football Conference. Johnson now plays for the University of Windsor Lancers in Ontario.
Croxford's football team continued to improve in the coming years, as well. In 2019, the Cavaliers finished with a so-so record as the squad underwent a rebuild, ultimately finishing sixth in the seven-team RVSA. But once again, a crop of the team's graduating players from 2019 signed contracts to continue their football careers at the junior level. Charlie Simmons, Kai Olsen, and Tyler Ruck became the next crop of Croxford football graduates to join teams in the British Columbia Football Conference.
Post-pandemic progress
Following a lengthy hiatus from competition brought on by COVID-19 in 2020, the Cavaliers football team's rise to prominence has continued in the post-pandemic years, culminating in a historic season last fall.
2022 was the Cavaliers' most successful year on the gridiron yet. Led by the likes of university-bound seniors like Tyson Heather and Khaleel Raheem, Croxford marched to a school-best 8-2 record. The team spent most of the 2022 season ranked second or third among the province's top 10 Tier II high-school football teams, their movement up the charts coming on the back of a six-game winning streak to start the season.
Head coach Josiah Donahue noted the Cavaliers were also ranked 12th in the country among schools of a similar enrolment by CanadaFootballChat.com in 2022.
While their playoff run ended at the semi-final stage due to a heavy loss to the George McDougall Mustangs (who went on to win the RVSA title), the Cavaliers ended the 2022 campaign with a pair of wins in the RVSA's consolation playoff bracket, to finish with the division's bronze medal.
Donahue attributes a dedicated staff of W.H. Croxford teachers who double as football coaches for the team's steady ascent in recent years, calling the crop of teacher-coaches the foundation of the Cavaliers football program.
“We’ve been able to build on that and bring in the people [we need],” he said. “We’re trying to focus on emphasizing leadership and utilizing our student leaders on the team, and trying to grow that.
“That all fosters an atmosphere of success and accountability, which has really helped us grow.”
Speaking of accountability, Donahue said it is a word that is often repeated in Croxford's locker room. He said the coaches stress the importance to the school's football players of holding themselves and their teammates accountable – and not just on the field.
Moving forward
As W.H. Croxford inches toward its 10-year anniversary next year, athletics coordinator Jared Fuller said he's excited about where the school is heading – both academically and athletically.
“Our administration has really bought into the idea that sports are important in our schools, and they value it,” he said. “The kids are seeing that as well, so we’re trying to get some more culture-type things in our school. We want to have an TV by our entrance, where we can profile athletes. We have some old jerseys up in some shadow boxes now. Everything takes time, and I’m very excited to see where our programs can [go] in the next few years.
Fuller noted when it comes to high-school sport, athletics programs are more than about providing a place to compete or blow off energy. They're also an avenue that can teach other life lessons, such as the value of teamwork, the ability to lose or win gracefully, and the importance of time management.
He said every fall, Croxford's coaches sit down with the student-athletes to outline expectations and what it takes to instill successful habits. If those messages sink in, they're likely to stay with the athletes well beyond their high-school years.
“One of the things we try to raise the bar for all of our athletes is, because we have so much interest in our programs…is that we can say the expectations for the athletes is making sure you have no unexcused absences,” he said. “You need to make sure you’re not late for classes, that you’re in good academic standing, that your assignments are in. The teams that have bought into the accountability aspect have seen the most success.
“If you create habits in your life, you’ll be successful not only in [sport] but build successful habits as people.”
