Lions Win Two SPC Titles

On Satuday, November 9, 2013, St. Mark's competed in the Fall SPC Championship.

The Cross Country team traveled to Ft. Worth Trinity Valley to run in the SPC Championship Race. The weather and course conditions were perfect for the SPC runners to put up some good times, and our runners did just that. Led by captain Matthew Brown ’14, six Marksman placed in the top 20 and were named ALL-SPC. Matthew finished 6th, followed by JT Graass ’16 (7th), Nick Buckenham ’15 (9th), Daniel Cope ’17 (13th), Harrison Perkins ’14 (14th), and Rishi Kshatriya ’15 (18th). The team scored a conference low 49 points and won the SPC Championship, their first since 2007!

 

The Varsity Volleyball team then took its turn in the SPC Championship game. After beating Houston Kinkaid 3-0 on Friday, and then Greenhill 3-0 early Saturday morning, the Lions matched up against a tough Casady (Oklahoma City) team who was playing to avenge their only two conference losses, both at the hands of the Lions. St. Mark's jumped out to an early 2-0 lead behind the pin point setting of captain Carson Pate ’14, and the powerful hitting of Teddy Edwards ’14, Harrison Lin ’14, Tim Simenc ’15, and Parker Dixon ’16. The Cyclones stormed back in game 3 to make the match interesting, but a renewed effort by the Lions in game 4, where Tabish Dayani ’14 blocked nearly everything at the net and Blake Spangler ’15 dug anything that got by the blockers, helped the Lions successfully defend their SPC Championship and give them back-to-back championships for the first time since its streak of 5 championships back in 1977-1981.

 

The Varsity Football team played Kinkaid (Houston) in the SPC Large School Championship game on Saturday evening. In one of the highest scoring games in SPC playoff history, the Lions and the Falcons traded blow after blow for the entire 48 minutes. The Lions struck first and held on to a 10-0 lead after 1 quarter, However, Kinkaid answered with a 4 TD 2nd quarter to take a 26-24 lead into halftime. The second half was just as exciting, as both teams refused to break and continued to make play after play on offense. The teams combined for 1,082 total yards and 53 first downs. In the end, the Falcons held on to beat the Lions by a score of 59-45 in what will go down as one of the finest combined displays of offense in SPC history. In the contest, John Webb ’14 threw for 493 yards and 4 TDs, William Caldwell ’16 caught 17 passes for 258 yards and 2 TDs, John Caldwell ’14 had 113 yards on 7 catches and a TD, and Case Brabham ’15 caught 8 passes for 83 yards and a TD.  For the season, John Webb finished 1st in passing in the SPC and 2nd in the metroplex (private schools) with 3,543 passing yards and 39 TDs, John Caldwell led all private school receivers with 1,406 yards receiving and finished second with 15 receiving TDs, and William Caldwell finished 4th in the SPC and 7th overall in receiving yards with 965 yards.