This week brought news that two of the more successful coaches in the area will be stepping down after the winter season.
Monica Tritz, who currently sports an incredible 113-24 over a five-plus year span, revealed she would be leaving the Fort Zumwalt West girls basketball program.
Tritz, who has led the Jaguar program into the same conversation with area elite teams Incarnate Word and St. Joseph's, wants to focus on her family, which includes husband Adam and two small children.
Meanwhile, Granite City wrestling coach Allen Kirgan announced his retirement after 13 seasons. Kirgan has compiled a 355-57 dual record since taking over in 1999.
Kirgan's team is among the favorites at the upcoming Class 4A Edwardsville Regional. He already had a family member close by, as son George has been one of his assistants for five years. Dad has already endorsed son for the job.
For more on Tritz, click here. For more on Kirgan, click here.
A LEGEND IN THE POOL
While we're on the subject of coaches, you're not going to find many that were more warmly regarded than Wally Lundt.
The longtime water polo and swimming coach at Clayton, Lafayette and Normandy passed away Dec. 26, 2011 at age 84. And a crowd estimated at 350 paid tribute to Lundt in a memorial service at Washington University last weekend.
For more on the tribute to Lundt, check out Brett Auten's story.
KNIGHT AND DEI
Mater Dei is good just about anything athletically and probably will be sooner rather than later when it comes to wrestling.
But for now, the Knights are taking their lumps as a first-year program. They have just six wrestlers, all freshmen, and only one has ever wrestled before. That one, Nick Czar has experienced some individual success this season.
For more area wrestling tidbits, check out Joe Lyons and Dennis Barnidge's latest notebook.
TAKE A BOW
The latest batch of STLhighschoolsports.com Athletes of the Week is out and this week's edition features a trio of boys basketball standouts, a couple of girls basketball players adept at the art of stealing the ball and two wrestlers who recently won tournament championships.
THURSDAY REWIND
• The Coaches vs. Cancer Shootout had another successful outing, this time at the Scottrade Center. Winners from the third annual event on the girls side were Westminster and Bolingbrook, and the boys winners were Parkway South, Belleville West, Glenbard East, McCluer, Cardinal Ritter and Whitney Young.
• Make it six straight Cahokia Conference titles for the Breese Central girls basketball team after the Cougars' 60-51 victory at Carlyle.
ON THE TOWN, FRIDAY STYLE
Readers can come back to the site late Friday to catch up on all the game action. Here's what we're covering.
• The Ameritime Classic boys basketball tournament at Missouri Baptist wraps up with a championship top-10 large-schools matchup featuring No. 9 Hazelwood Central (13-4) against No. 10 De Smet (14-5). Tip-off is 8:30.
• The Fort Zumwalt North boys tournament also culminates with an 8:30 championship between Troy (15-6) and Parkway North (15-2).
• And the girls have a title to settle also when Parkway North (12-6) and Jennings (11-7) square off at the Parkway Central tournament at 8:30.
• Belleville East (11-8, 4-4) dropped a game Thursday at the Coaches vs. Cancer Shootout and will look to get back on track with a boys basketball game at No. 8 large school Edwardsville (12-4, 5-2) at 7:30.
• Lutheran North (13-3, 2-1, No. 6 SS) travels to John Burroughs (11-3, 2-1) for a Metro League boys game that tips at 7.
• O'Fallon (15-4, 4-3) now has sole possession of fourth place in the Southwestern Conference boys race and will look to keep it with a home game against Alton (6-13, 0-7). Tip-off is 7:30.
• Westminster (15-2, 2-0) will look to make it six wins in a row when it plays at Principia (14-3, 4-0) in a battle for Metro League girls hoops supremacy at 6.
THE VIEW FROM ELSEWHERE
• Jordan Stevens and his family moved across town in Columbia and, in doing so, he went from attending Hickman to Rock Bridge. And as Garrett Riche of the Columbia Missourian shows us, Stevens scored nine points in his current team's 64-50 win over his former team.
• There is another Lafayette and it lies in St. Joseph. The Irish have not won a city wrestling dual since 2006, but as Ross Martin of the St. Joseph News-Press reports, Cameron Bohnsack could help Lafayette change all that.
