Go Dolphins!
The Ocracoke Dolphins will host the Manteo Redskins at home on Friday, January 8th in the Dolphin Tank (a.k.a. the Ocracoke School gym). The Junior Varsity will play at 4pm, followed by the Varsity Girls and Boys. Fear the Pod! Come to the game or listen at home at WOVV 90.1 FM or online at wovv.org. The Dolphins play away at Camden County High School on Saturday.
The Varsity Dolphins Boys' season is 6–3 overall, with 3 wins and 1 loss in Coastal 10 conference games. Senior Evin Caswell leads the scoring with an average of 19.8 points per game, followed by his little brother, sophomore Liam, who averages 14.2 points per game.
The Lady Dolphins are undefeated (4–0) in the conference, and have a season overall record of 6 wins and 3 losses so far. Junior Sydney Austin is the top scorer – she averages an amazing 24.9 points per game. She has already scored 209 points this season, and, with a career total of 897 points, she is fast on her way to scoring her thousandth point in her junior year! (Correction: we originally reported that Sydney would be the first to earn 1000 points in her junior year, but actually, Lucy O'Neal (Class of 2015) already set that bar for the Lady Dolphins!)
Our newest sportswriters, Julian Bennink and Jackson Strange, are 6th graders at Ocracoke School. They wrote the following re-cap of the Holiday Basketball Tournament that the Dolphins hosted in mid-December:
Last month’s basketball tournament was truly amazing!
We interviewed Coach Adam Burleson before the tournament started and he felt great about this tournament and is looking forward to all of the upcoming games. He was hoping he could redeem the Ocracoke girls against First Flight but they fell by 15 points on Friday night, December 11th.
Well, both Ocracoke teams came out on top of the Crusaders in Game 1. The girls won by 22 points and the boys won by 20 points.
In all, Sydney Austin had an astonishing 58 points in the whole tournament and Evin Caswell had an amazing 37 points and 6 of those points where dunks. Also Darvin Contreras, at the end of the Crusaders game, made 3 three-pointers in a row.
The next day the Ocracoke girls and boys fell. The Ocracoke girls lost to First Flight by 15 points and the Ocracoke boys lost to Greenbrier Christian Academy. The First Flight girls came in first place and the Greenbrier boys came in first place. The Ocracoke boys and girls both came in second place. The players of the tournament were Liam Caswell and Evin Caswell.
Well, that sums up the whole Holiday Basketball Tournament on the Ocracoke Current.
Last, but not least: also at this year's Holiday Tournament, a former Dolphin was inducted into the Ocracoke School Wall of Fame for his 4-year basketball career. Andrew Tillett scored 1233 points overall in his high school career of 80 games. He averaged over 15 points per game, and over 13 rebounds per game, with a total of 1062 rebounds. His facial hirsuteness also gave the team a rallying cry of "Fear the Beard!"
Andrew, who was also the valedictorian of the class of 2014, is now a sophomore at Chapel Hill, where he is studying physics. He was eager to talk to the Current about the Wall of Fame.
"It's a complete honor," he said. "There aren't many people on the basketball wall of fame, and I think it's really awesome that I get to be a part of this group."
He joins Ronnie O'Neal, Bill Evans, Wade Austin, and Echo Bennink on the Dolphins' Wall of Fame.
