Among the inevitable offseason moves on the area coaching carousel, one stood out.
Hampton Roads Academy, located in Newport News, recently named former Virginia Wesleyan men’s coach and player Chris Mills as its new boys soccer coach and assistant athletic director.
Mills, who lives in Chesapeake and whose young daughter attends HRA, guided the Marlins to a 12-4-4 overall record, 6-1-3 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, last season. He was a three-year All-ODAC player and was the ODAC Coach of the Year in 2013, when he directed VWU to the conference championship.
At VWU, Mills’ three-year assistant, Stefan Kohler, took over as the head coach.
Simpson gains Penn State post: Kristen Simpson, a 2004 Norfolk Collegiate graduate, recently was named Penn State’s women’s golf coach.
Simpson has spent time as an assistant coach at Old Dominion (2011-14) and Maryland (2014-18), served as the associate head coach at North Carolina (2018-21) and was most recently the assistant coach at Wisconsin since July 2021.
Simpson played for Virginia, where she graduated with an economics degree in 2008, and was a team captain in her final two seasons.
Near misses: Patrick Gareiss of Chesapeake and Brandon Sipe of Yorktown, a homeschooled rising ninth-grader, were among the players who barely missed the cut to qualify for the U.S. Amateur Championship at Golden Horseshoe Golf Club in Williamsburg.
Gareiss, from Hickory High and Radford University, shot 70-64 for an 8-under-par 134, tying for fifth in a 36-hole qualifier in which only the top three advanced among 72 players who completed at least a round. Sipe (69-67) was at 136, sharing 10th place.
Ryan Leach (142), Robb Kinder (146) and Parker Wingfield (147) were among other familiar local names in the field.
VPCC pitcher named All-American: T.J. McDonough, a relief pitcher for Virginia Peninsula Community College, was named an NJCAA Division 3 first-team All-American by The JBB, which bills itself as the “official home for junior-college baseball.”
In 30 innings, he earned two wins and two saves while posting a 3.97 ERA. He faced 144 batters, giving up 37 hits and striking out 25. He graduated with an associate degree in business and will go to Division III Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, where he also will play baseball.
Crabbers rule Heritage league: The Hampton High boys won the Heritage summer-league basketball championship in Newport News, defeating Norcom 45-29 in the final. Jamarie Lumpkin’s 13 points and Gavin Kay’s 11 led the Crabbers.
In the semifinals, Hampton beat Indian River and Norcom ousted Nansemond River.
Walsingham hires Graves: Walsingham Academy recently named Brian Graves as its boys basketball coach. The former Heritage High and Catawba point guard, who played pro ball in Germany, has been on the coaching staffs of Longwood, North Carolina Central, Western Carolina and Hampton University.
Poquoson star in international event: Longtime Poquoson player Sandi Benites was invited to represent the United States in the Gordon Trophy. The annual tennis competition between age 45-and-over players from the United States and Canada, which began in 1949, is being held this weekend at Cleveland Racquet Club in Ohio.
Matches are held in 45s, 50s, 55s, 60s, 65s, 70s, 80s and 85s. Benites is eligible for the 85s.
Ex-Monarch climbs rankings: Former Old Dominion star Holly Hutchinson, who grew up in London, reached a career-high Women’s Tennis Association doubles ranking of 475th after teaming with Madeleine Brooks.
They won three matches, including a quarterfinal against the top seeds, at a $25,000 minor-league hard-court event in Roehampton, England, before falling in the championship match.
Tennis battle of the ages:
On July 10 at Salisbury Country Club in Midlothian, far away from the featured courts, a Mid-Atlantic Open Clay Court Championships women’s first-round match had just a few onlookers.
But it highlighted two players with Hampton Roads connections and interesting stories.
German native Laima Frosch should head to Virginia Tech in about a month to play tennis for the Hokies. At 15, she’s academically gifted and will be one of the nation’s youngest college tennis players. She attended Bayside High but did not play on its tennis team, sticking to U.S. Tennis Association-sanctioned events. She even won a coveted gold ball — awarded for first place in USTA national events — in the girls 14-and-under bracket at the 2022 Winter Nationals.
Her family moved from Kiel, in northern Germany, to Virginia Beach because her father, Andreas, represents Germany at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Norfolk. Her mom, Jurgita, was at the match cheering for her daughter and said the family soon will move back to Germany.
Frosch has trained with Ryan Davidson, a former Hokie himself, at Virginia Beach Tennis & Country Club and has lots of shotmaking variety and competitive fire. If she can grow physically and in terms of maturity, she could help the Hokies (10-14, 1-12 Atlantic Coast Conference last season). Perhaps she even could compete for a starting spot in the lineup’s lower end.
Her opponent was at the other end of the spectrum: 50-year-old Allison White, a former candidate for city council and treasurer in Virginia Beach. A former VHSL state boys tennis champion (then known as Sean White) for Cox who played as high as No. 1 in college for James Madison, began teaching at King’s Fork High in Suffolk when it opened in 2004. Government and history are subjects she has taught in the International Baccalaureate program.
She told colleagues and administrators of her transgender status in 2017 and said they’ve been supportive.The contest against Frosch was one of White’s few USTA-sanctioned matches since becoming female, though she had an excellent season in a recently completed 4.5 team league. Frosch controlled most of the rallies with power and placement, prompting White to frequently hit drop shots and to try to follow them with lobs.
As one might expect in a match where the players had a 35-year age difference, youth prevailed. Frosch won the first 11 games before White took the next two. Frosch then closed a 6-0, 6-2 victory.
White said she didn’t used to play with so much touch in lieu of power, but female hormones in the transition “just destroy that masculine strength.”
She said she has gotten frustrated with a perception that transgender athletes dominate women’s sports. (Lia Thomas’ college swimming career with Penn perhaps fueled some of that.)
White was proud to avoid a shutout in the second set. “You know I’ll fight” in competition, she said.
Ironically for someone who never played VHSL tennis, Frosch then got to play two-time Class 6 singles champion Simone Bergeron in the second round.
In a long, competitive match that had contentious moments about line calls and ball marks on the clay court, Frosch fell 7-5, 6-4 to Bergeron, who played for James Madison High in Vienna and soon will compete for Elon. The loss highlighted Frosch’s need for maturity as she heads to the Hokies.
