Three’s Company: How Durham Academy Won Three Team State Athletics Titles in One Day
By Dylan Howlett
18-minute read
It was the morning of Saturday, May 16, when 34 players on the Durham Academy boys lacrosse team clambered onto a bus parked in front of Kirby Gym for its third trip to Charlotte in eight days. The 13 entrants on the DA girls track and field team awakened in a hotel in Lewisville, North Carolina, and braced for the second of two days at a sweltering meet. And the 12 members of the DA boys tennis team would soon gather on its home court, baked beneath a late-spring sun that would send temperatures into the high 80s, or 10 degrees warmer than Durham’s seasonal average. DA had, as of that Saturday morning, won eight state championships since 2012. All eight came from girls teams; a boys program hadn’t won a championship since 2009.
By the time Sam Hertzog ’28 hit a decisive backhand winner at 1:50 p.m. EST, and Curry Jennings ’26 buried a championship-winning goal in sudden-death overtime at 2:45 p.m. EST, and Selena Burrus ’27 crossed the finish line in fifth place of the girls 200m at 3:15 p.m. EST, the Cavaliers had won three team state titles in an hour and 25 minutes. It was the first time DA won three athletics state championships in one day since 1988.
“I think,” Director of Athletics Andy Pogach wrote on DA.org a few days later, “we will be talking about May 16, 2026, for a long time around Durham Academy’s campuses.”
Four months have passed, and Pogach appears more prophetic than ever. Soon there will be personal totems and physical testimonials — later this fall, coaches and athletes will receive custom-sized rings, and the athletics banners hanging on the walls of Kirby Gym will boast “2026” in three places — to immortalize the championship trifecta. But it couldn’t possibly capture the devotion, and the camaraderie, that a title-winning team embodies every day.
Here, then, is an effort to do so: from the perspectives of the three teams that authored a historic day for DA Athletics, and the coaches and 59 student-athletes who together crossed finish lines proverbial and literal.
Durham Academy Boys Tennis
1:50 p.m. | DA Tennis Courts
First state championship in program history
DA’s first boys team state championship since 2009 (Boys Cross Country)
In a regulation tennis match, roughly 25 seconds elapse between the end of one point and the start of the next. Sean Bilsborrow ’94 has spent hours thinking about them. “It’s some of the most important time that anyone will spend on the court,” he said.
About eight years ago, Bilsborrow was standing in the checkout line at a local Harris Teeter when he recognized Brian Kalbas, the longtime head coach of the UNC women’s tennis team and the winningest active coach in NCAA tennis. The psychology of tennis — and the sport’s inherent loneliness in singles play — inevitably came up. Kalbas told Bilsborrow that every year, his team reads a different book about sports psychology, and the players take turns presenting a chapter to the rest of the team. Bilsborrow was so enamored with the idea that he appropriated it for the DA boys tennis team.
“I like to think, or at least hope, that it translates to a moment where you’re on the court, it’s super tight, and you know you’ve got to control your breathing and be more mentally tough than the guy across the net,” Bilsborrow said in a Zoom interview this summer. “That’s really what tennis is about.” This past season, the DA boys tennis team would read Gerry Mack’s Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence. It marked Bilsborrow’s 25th year as head coach.
It was hard to foresee that season ending in a championship celebration on DA’s home court. The Cavaliers lost four of their top six players in 2025 to graduation, including his son, Jet Bilsborrow ’25, who owns the second-most career wins in the boys tennis program. “We were, on the surface, in real rebuild mode,” Bilsborrow said.
But the surface belied what Bilsborrow saw below. He isn’t bashful about using the word “sneaky” around his players as a nod toward playful but genuine optimism, and Bilsborrow told them they had a chance to be “sneaky good.” Bilsborrow played tennis at Bates College under longtime head coach Paul Gastonguay, who once served as hitting partner to eight-time Grand Slam champion Ivan Lendl. Gastonguay had the antidote to the isolationism of tennis: a team. Nobody is bigger than it. Nobody quits on it. Everybody plays for each other, and everybody fights until the last point.
Bilsborrow brought that culture to DA, where he has leaned on standardbearers like Andy Ye ’26 and Eli Werness ’26. “They are great connectors of our team,” Bilsborrow said. David Ilut ’29 was new to DA. An eighth grader, Benigno David, had spent the previous year away from DA in the Philippines and was new to the program. Sam Hertzog ’28 and Everett Sun ’27 would need to take on larger roles as returning players. They would all bond over sprawling games of the popular mobile game Brawl Stars and team dinners at Moe’s. Ye went out of his way to say hello and check in on younger teammates whenever they’d bump into each other on campus. Werness broke on-court tension with well-timed jokes, and his TikTok-inspired daily Starbucks order —a venti strawberry cream frappuccino blended beverage with four pumps of vanilla syrup, four pumps of white chocolate mocha sauce, one scoop of strawberry fruit inclusions, caramel crunch topping and caramel sauce on the lining of the cup — became an endless source of hilarity and bewilderment. Ye, a 12th grader, and David, an eighth grader, became an inseparable doubles duo with an inimitable celebration: They had originally served as training partners at the Hope Valley Farms YMCA when Ye was a 10th grader. One of his coaches said that if they ever played doubles together, Ye should lift up the younger David in the same style as Rafiki holding Simba aloft in The Lion King. The celebration became a fixture of the 2026 season.
The Cavaliers also worked hard. Bilsborrow toted a clipboard to every practice that carried with it a daily plan of drills and points of emphasis. It also had individualized notes on every player, which he’d put to good use during “The Lab” — or one-on-one practice sessions that highlighted a specific area of growth — on DA’s Court No. 6. Werness had always considered his forehand an unquestioned strength, but he began spraying attempted winners wide and long after meticulously setting up his opponent during rallies. He fixed that issue in The Lab. Both Werness and Ye would holler all the way across multiple courts whenever they saw a teammate hit a great shot or a winner. And the team’s commitment didn’t waver when the Cavs lost three of their first four matches. “They recognized the opportunity, and these guys were so coachable,” Bilsborrow said. “They worked so hard every day. They asked questions. They were willing to go outside their comfort zone. And we talked a lot about just looking at the long-term vision and needing to take a step back to take two steps forward.
“It’s so easy as a coach to say that, but it’s another thing for a high school boy to be willing to do that. They all really did that together. It was remarkable.”
The Cavaliers would win 17 of their final 18 matches. They defeated Providence Day in the state quarterfinals. They would trail 2–1 after doubles play — and drop four of their first six sets in singles play — in their state semifinal against Cary Academy before storming back, with Sun and Ilut each winning second-set tiebreakers to clinch the match.
The state final — Bilsborrow’s fourth such appearance as head coach — at home vs. Charlotte Latin School would be far less adventurous. Hertzog and Sun cruised to a doubles win and finished the season undefeated as a tandem. Werness won his doubles and his singles match to claim his 99th and 100th individual victories as a DA tennis player. And Hertzog hit a pristine, cross-court, backhand winner at the conclusion of his singles match to clinch DA’s first-ever boys tennis championship.
The players doused Bilsborrow — at the behest of his wife, Audrey — with water from a nearby cooler. Bilsborrow’s whole family was beside him — his daughter Sasha Bilsborrow ’26 was there in her capacity as team manager, while Audrey and Jet both attended as spectators — as Pogach emceed the trophy presentation. Bilsborrow found himself getting emotional. He thought about 25 years of late evenings, and how much of his time his family had forfeited — with no shortage of understanding — so he could pour even more energy into his student-athletes and The Lab and their futures. Naturally, he thought of Werness and Ye. “It couldn’t have happened to two nicer representatives of DA and of our team,” Bilsborrow said. Werness thought about how happy he was for Bilsborrow, and how delighted he was for the team’s newest members. Ye’s thoughts, meanwhile, returned to that consequential time interval his coach had so exhaustively prioritized.
“I’m really happy that we did it this year with these specific guys, and we handled all the challenges along the way that we did,” Ye said. “In a way, it just goes to show that not everything has to go perfectly. You just have to enjoy the journey and remember those 25 seconds. If you lose a point, if you lose a match, if you have an off day, it’s not the end of the season. You just keep moving forward.”
And the memory of this spring will last much, much longer than 25 seconds.
“When they come back to a reunion 10, 20 years from now, they will always have that shared history,” Bilsborrow said. “That’s better than anything.”
Durham Academy Boys Lacrosse
2:45 p.m. | Charlotte
First state championship since 2003
When he walked off of Moylan Field on the sultry afternoon of May 17, 2025, having watched his team lose in the state final after what felt like a season of championship destiny, all Jon Lantzy could do was think of the team that had defeated his own. He had just completed his 18th season at the helm of the DA boys lacrosse program, and he had just made his third trip to the state final. It was the third time his team had lost. He didn’t dwell on this latest heartbreak, or the apparent squandering of another chance to win a trophy. “It’s the beauty of sport,” he said in an interview with DA Marketing & Communications the following summer. Somebody wins. Somebody loses.
DA’s opponent that day, Christ School, was still wrapped in the clutches of grief. The year before, a junior on the team, RJ Fox, died in a car accident on the night of his prom. Fox would have been a senior in 2025, parading around a field in Durham as he celebrated a state championship with his friends. He had worn No. 12. A year later, in his honor, Fox’s Christ School teammates scored a few goals at the end of the 2025 title game to ensure the final margin of victory was 12–4. They paraded around the field afterward with Fox’s jersey. “I was really disappointed for our kids,” Lantzy said. “But their kids needed it more.”
The beauty of sports rests in its healing properties as much as its offer of redemption. Lantzy went looking for it in the name of process, not outcomes. In the fall of 2024, his daughter, Katherine, won her fourth consecutive field hockey national championship at Middlebury College to sustain one of the great modern-day dynasties in collegiate athletics. After Katherine graduated, Lantzy had to know. The other teams are good, he said. Nothing is automatic, he said. What was it about your culture, he asked Katherine, that allowed the Panthers to get to the finish line every year? It was simple, Katherine said: They problem-solved, in real time, any real or perceived barriers to quash any possible excuse that would thwart their desired goal. An interpersonal dynamic. A practice drill. A specific moment in a game. They did it better than anybody else. They never looked for the reason why they couldn’t: They looked for the reason they could.
It became Lantzy’s charge for the 2026 season. And 364 days after DA’s loss in the 2025 title game, Lantzy stood before his 34 players in the cramped visitors locker room at Charlotte Country Day School. In a few minutes, they would march side by side in two even lines toward Dowd Field, where they would contest the 2026 NCISAA Division I state championship game. It would be Lantzy’s last at DA. Before the season, he had told his senior captains in confidence that he was a finalist for three athletics positions at a trio of other schools. If he received an offer, Lantzy knew, it would come in the middle of their season. He had built his entire program on trust, on transparency. He let his captains in, and prepared them, to ensure any potential news wouldn’t derail their collective journey. As he addressed the Cavaliers before the state championship game, Lantzy was six weeks away from leaving DA to become the athletic director at Christ School. He had no need for melodrama.
“Like I said in practice yesterday, you have everything you need to solve every problem that’s put in front of you today,” he told his players. “And that’s the way we have to approach it. We’re just problem-solving: minute to minute, play to play.”
They had already confronted a host of season-long problems, and they had solved most of them. The Cavaliers lost several decorated seniors after the 2025 title game. Camden Hughes ’26 had played in that game and felt an all-encompassing numbness afterward. That was their one shot, he figured, and it would never come again. But he did his best to dream it all up again as 2026 approached. He convinced three varsity boys soccer players — Jack Kelley ’26, Gavin Lamb ’26 and Pieter Sauer ’26 — to join the team. The lacrosse team needed depth, athleticism and endurance to withstand 48 minutes of regulation play. Never mind that Kelley hadn’t played lacrosse since eighth grade, or that he had been a behavioral handful years ago in Lantzy’s Middle School PE class, or that Lamb and Sauer had not so much as touched a lacrosse stick in their lives before the season. They were now deputized as problem-solvers.
The challenges, at the beginning, were vast. The Cavaliers started 0–4, and their opponents outscored them 46–23. By the end of the first quarter of its fifth game, against Charlotte Latin School, the Cavaliers trailed, 4–0. Wow, Hughes thought. We’re screwed. But then their somnambulant offense awakened. They received four goals from four different players to tie the game before halftime and eventually won, 11–9. They went on to win eight of their next nine games, including six straight in April. During the stretch run toward the postseason, Lantzy ditched the one set out of which DA’s offense had operated all year in favor of a new play called “Switch,” in which Curry Jennings ’26 would throw a dummy dodge and toss the ball to Ian Schulz ’26 behind the cage while Cooper Coene ’27 cut inside for an easy finish. Lantzy pressed all 34 guys to be “May ready in May,” an annual mantra that beseeched his players to peak at the right time. He sees the purpose of coaches, other than serving as a life-changing adult to their players, as closing the chasm between the team’s most and least experienced players. Every kid, he says, has more to give. That included the three recent soccer converts, all of whom became starters by year’s end — and Kelley, who, by his own admission, had acted like “a complete buffoon” in Lantzy’s PE class. It didn’t blunt Lantzy’s belief whatsoever. “I could tell,” Lantzy told Kelley during the 2026 season, “you were gonna be something special.”
The postseason would prove to be nothing less than a veritable gauntlet. DA would drive to Charlotte three times in eight days during the state tournament. “As seniors, we made a promise to ourselves that we weren’t going to let a three-hour bus ride affect what we’ve put in all of these years,” Kelley said. The Cavaliers set up two speakers — one in the middle of the bus, one in the back — and blasted pump-up music for the duration of the rides. The mood was jubilant. They ate Jersey Mike’s on the first leg of every trip; Kelley always ordered a large club sub with no tomato and banana pepper added, and he would eat three quarters of the sandwich on the drive to Charlotte before enjoying his leftovers for the return trip. The Cavaliers stopped at the same Sheetz on every ride back to Durham and decamped in the dining area for 45 minutes, sharing double hot dog combos and electrolyte-laden beverages as the clock winked toward 10 p.m. The games would become as routine as the transportation and late-night nourishment. The Cavaliers beat Charlotte Christian School, 6–3, in the quarterfinals on May 8. Four days later, they topped Providence Day School, 10–7, in the semifinal.
And they were back four days after that, at Charlotte Country Day, for the final. Before he left the locker room, Lantzy read aloud a text message that former DA lacrosse player Sam Petrucci ’16 had sent the night before. Bring one home for all of us, it read in part. “We’re going to make that tradition proud today with everything we’ve got for the next two hours,” Lantzy told his team. “Y’all understand? Everything we have.”
They would need it in a title game defined by punches and counterpunches. Hunter Freedman ’29 opened the scoring before the Buccaneers scored three unanswered goals. Schulz responded with a goal of his own, but CCDS would score again to claim a 4–2 halftime lead. Then Schulz potted his second before Hughes, who would earn All-American honors for the second straight season, tied the game at 4. CCDS took the lead once more before Jennings scored the tying goal with eight minutes to play. The Buccaneers hit the post with a minute left in regulation. Time expired, and both teams went to overtime.
The Buccaneers won possession off of the opening faceoff and set up their offense. Drew Roeder ’26 was, at one point, a seventh grade basketball player at DA, and Lantzy recalled his on-court presence as one bereft of confidence and full of timidness. Some five years later, Roeder was now DA’s goalie in his only season as a lacrosse starter, staring down a Buccaneers attack that could, with one flick of the wrist, consign the Cavaliers to another title-game defeat. They fired a shot toward the cage. Roeder made the save. DA called timeout.
The night before the title game, Jennings had a dream. He scored the game-winning goal in overtime of the state championship game and sprinted toward midfield before leaping off of one leg and extending his glove skyward, as if he were completing a basketball layup, before letting it fall elegantly to the ground. During the timeout, Lantzy would call Jennings’ number on the play design. The whistle sounded. Jack Rand ’26 would eventually receive the ball and pass to Jennings, who charged to his right and spun to elude two defenders. He nearly lost control of the ball before corralling it and shoveling a skipping backhander toward the cage. It bounced once off the turf and in between the CCDS goaltender. Thus began the pandemonium.
The majority of the Cavaliers launched their sticks and gloves and helmets as far as they could throw them. Jennings, meanwhile, stoically executed the celebration he had choreographed in his dreams. The players hugged each other. Kelley cried. Lantzy would eventually share an embrace with his wife, Suzanne. On the team’s triumphant drive back to Durham, the Cavaliers would make their traditional detour to Sheetz, where Lantzy clutched the trophy to his chest and smiled with the incandescence of a coach who had waited nearly two decades to see his student-athletes experience the ultimate reward. An employee at Sheetz was so taken by the sight of championship hardware and the unfolding celebration that she searched “Durham Academy Lacrosse” on her phone and found news of the state title game. And on their last of six bus rides to and from Charlotte in little more than a week, the players decided that the nearly 4-mile stretch of road separating the three larger Charlotte independent schools that had long tormented DA athletics in postseason play should be rechristened as something far more fitting. It should be renamed, they decided, Durham Academy Road.
Lantzy’s thoughts drifted back to his 18 years at DA, and the beauty of sports, and the starkness of outcomes that uplift as much as they can devastate. He had lived it during 19 seasons that always ended in a loss, after which he would turn his locker room over to his seniors for speeches that let them eulogize how, exactly, playing for this program had made them feel. The tradition was as cathartic and affirming as it was sad. After he returned to the CCDS locker room following the May 16 title game, Lantzy placed the championship trophy in the middle of the room.
“There it is,” he said, with his final group of Cavaliers gathered around him.
He paused and waited for those old, familiar feelings to return.
“I gotta be honest with you,” Lantzy said to his players. He smiled. “I don’t feel sad at all.”
Durham Academy Girls Track & Field
3:15 p.m. | Lewisville
First state championship since 2000
Costen Irons ’98 had a choice to make. The Durham Academy girls track team had underperformed in the mile at the state meet. Its chance at first place, and its first state championship since 2000, and its first state title since the championship trophy was named after legendary DA track and cross country coach Dennis Cullen, dangled precariously in the thick air that had settled over the infield at Forsyth Country Day School. Irons couldn’t let it slip away.
The track and field co-head coach walked over to three of his most reliable distance runners. Audrey Crowder ’26 had, on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon, already won the 3200m — by more than 14 seconds — and the 1600m to claim her first individual state track championships, three years after she won her first individual state title in the 2022 girls cross country championships. She stood now beside Helen Barritt ’28 and Harper Maxwell ’28, who — along with fellow distance runners Elliot Register ’28 and Sybil Ludington ’30 — had paced the Cavaliers to DA’s first cross country state title since 2019 seven months prior.
The cross country team had an unshakable premonition during a summer training run that they could win a championship. And they would, in theory, form the nucleus of a distance corps that could lead the Cavaliers to a track title. That wasn’t on their mind as they attended winter training sessions every Tuesday and Thursday, and clipped off long runs on Saturdays, and comparatively ambled along on easy runs during the Upper School club period or a shared free period. They didn’t feel that same sort of belief, that same conviction, until a few weeks before the state track meet, when Irons held a mock meet to see where DA stood relative to its competition. Irons and track co-head coach Krishinda Lee ’04 — who had been promoted as an eighth grader to the girls 4x400m relay team that helped DA win its last track state title in 2000 — each scrutinized Cullen’s famed omnibus spreadsheet that contained the times of every school in every event during a given season. Irons and Lee raised their eyebrows after seeing the results of the mock meet: DA only trailed by 10 points. The Cavaliers could do this.
It was, in some ways, a small miracle. Irons had felt that DA would always find itself on the losing end of an unenviable numbers game. The schools are larger, and more numerous. The runners are faster, and more prepared. It wasn’t that long ago, Irons said, that a student-athlete could show up a week before the cross country season and keep up with the fastest runners. But quicker times and fiercer competition require more robust training. Irons, Lee and the rest of their year-round cross country and track staff — Cullen, kindergarten teacher Sloan Nuernberger, Upper School history and Latin teacher John Phillips, and Upper School math teacher Hana Baskin, plus the ever-supportive and ever-cheerful presence of Middle School coaches Virginia Hall ’91 and Chase Osorio — have long imparted the joy of the process to their runners. “It’s just one of those sports where everyone can find success,” Lee said.
The coaches helped student-athletes visualize every step of their races. They pored over film to perfect even the most minute segment of their races or attempts: taking a turn harder, getting out of the blocks quicker, adjusting their arm position, generating more rotation on a high jump. Training partners who would never see the track at the state meet pushed their teammates to improve their times. Irons and Lee urged their students to spend more time in the weight room, which helped with injury prevention, and encouraged steady communication with athletic trainers Anna Sundy ’15 and Marisa Scandole to prevent unnecessary wear and tear. “We’re getting them to learn their bodies,” Lee said, “and not fear failure.”
That fear weighed on Irons as he looked at Crowder, Maxwell and Barritt. The DA girls had, over the course of nearly two days of competition, vaulted themselves into title contention: They scored an emphatic victory in the 4x800m relay, culminating with a blistering leg time from Register, who had missed much of the previous three weeks with injury. Crowder would serve as headliner with her double in the 1600m and 3200m, but DA received contributions from everyone. That included two-sport athletes Charlotte Gunsch ’27 (softball) and Ally Lamb ’29 (lacrosse), both of whom formed two legs of the 4x200m relay team that finished second — and set a school record — and the second-place 4x100m relay team. Anya Brander ’28 and Alexendria Parker ’27 each placed third in the high jump and discus, respectively. Lucie Haws ’27 (second) and Anna Savage ’27 (third) both scored podium finishes in the pole vault. But the Cavs would still need something remarkable from their 800m runners.
The burden weighed heaviest on Crowder. She had been nothing less than 100% invested in DA running during her high school career, so much so that her level of care and devotion had trickled down to the rest of her teammates and cultivated a culture of self-improvement. Irons said he has seen research that indicates the presence of a high performer improves the performance of those around them by a margin of 15%. That would appear to, at minimum, double in the company of Crowder. “She is just the nicest person,” Lee said. “She would drop anything at any time to go help someone.” Now, Crowder realized as Irons looked at her, she needed to help her team, and her school, in the girls 800m.
Irons was blunt with his trio of distance runners. They had to outperform their previous individual ranking by at least one place in the 800m, or the state championship might slip through their fingers. Crowder began to cry. She had, after winning the 1600m and 3200m individual titles, achieved most everything a DA runner could achieve. But she wanted this particular title — for her teammates, for her school — and the prospect of falling short induced tears.
Irons blanched when he saw what he had done to his star runner. “I walked away thinking, ‘I’m the dumbest coach ever,’” he later said. But before he walked away, he told Crowder to remember her senior quote she had selected for the DA Yearbook. It was from Shalane Flanagan, a New York City Marathon champion and Olympic medalist: To chase the dream is to live. Irons looked at Crowder. “Chase that dream down when you’re running the 800,” he said.
The race began, and Crowder diligently adhered to her strategy: She would stick to the runner who went out fastest and hunt her down toward the homestretch. Crowder was about 200m from the finish, and hovering around second place, when she started her kick. Irons and Lee had emphasized more speed work during training, and Crowder would have to lean on it. Her body hurt. Her legs were shot. She kept going. “I just felt like I was giving my entire effort to try and get past her,” Crowder said. Her mind went blank save for a singular thought: It was time to do whatever it took to help her team. “It was the hardest I’ve ever kicked,” Crowder said.
It worked: Crowder passed Cannon School’s Elise Wrenholt in the final 150m to win the 800m for her third individual title of the state meet. And she had help: Maxwell (fourth) and Barritt (fifth) both posted top-5 finishes, which gave DA the points it needed to reclaim the lead. By the time Burrus placed fifth in the 200m, and the 4x400m relay team of Crowder, Burrus, Lamb and Register took third, the Cavaliers were team state champions once more.
The celebration afterward was ebullient. Irons felt his Achilles ache from spending the better part of two 12-hour days of competition on his feet. Lee felt similarly exhausted. She laughed to herself as she watched DA’s 13 state meet entrants jump around and pose for photos. “We didn’t want to leave,” Lee said.
They eventually would, and they would return to the front entrance of Kirby Gym to a rousing ovation from Pogach, Athletics staff and friends and family, just as the boys lacrosse team would upon its return from Charlotte.
Crowder gripped the Dennis Cullen Trophy as she stepped off the bus to a raucous ovation. She beamed. The Cavaliers had chased down their dreams.
Photos courtesy of DA Athletics (girls track and field), Evan Pike Photography (boys tennis, girls track and field), Sarah Schulz (boys lacrosse) and Anna Sundy '15 (boys tennis).