Decision Day (With a Look at the Defending Champions)

Yes, I’m behind on my recruits and to make things worse yesterday was Decision Day for a lot of students (not just student-athletes). So, I’m going to dive into things and make things right…right? No!

Well, okay. I will just like I’ve told you that I will in the past but maybe not this second.

Decision Day is May 1st and is the traditional day for high school seniors to make their final college decision. Now, in practice this is usually done prior to this date and even after this date but someone gave it the name “Decision Day” so we are going with it. In DIII athletics, however, it really comes down to the money (deposits). If a coach can see the money arrive at the school then they probably feel pretty good about the student-athlete coming their way. Things can change and with DI recruiting being so messed up this year with longer blackout periods imposed on them who knows what impact that will have.

So, I wanted to do a Decision Day article and as luck would have it another coach made the mistake of reaching out to me with a quick email to see how I was doing and as I tend to do I responded with “Fine. Here are 50 questions that I need you to answer and get back to me quickly.” As you might imagine, coaches don’t email me often anymore.

In this case it was Defending National Champion Head Coach Matt Troy of your Johns Hopkins Blue Jays and in fairness to my annoying questions back to him, he started it off by bragging that he nabbed a Texas recruit right out from under the West Region. I thought it was an interesting note but I would never be the type of writer to insult Evelyn Batista (DS/L) out of Austin, Texas for making a horrible decision to leave our little slice of heaven. No, I’m bigger than that. Okay, I’m not. What’s the deal Evelyn!?! Geez!

But thanks to Evelyn, I did get to briefly check in on our (still) defending champions to see how they were situated for the 2021 season. In case you didn’t know, Johns Hopkins didn’t play this 2020-21 season. Prior to their cancelled season, I thought that JHU was in pretty good shape for a return run. They had some impressive seniors coming back and would sport a larger than normal (for them) roster, which could only help if you knew how banged up they were their championship season. Of course, the Mid-Atlantic Region is also MUCH easier than our own never get our own regional because we’re so good we have to send our best teams out around the nation because the NCAA is scared of us…Evelyn. (I’m not sure why I’m picking on Evelyn at this point. I hope she has a good sense of humor about this.) But going into this fall, how are the defending champions going to look?

Unfortunately for the rest of the nation, this is what I got back from Coach Troy, “We’ll definitely have a different look. We’ll be a very veteran team with a lot of young talent that’ll have time to develop, and could even crack the starting lineup. Natalie Aston will be back, and there is a possibility of Simone Bliss returning as well. Returning from the National Champion team will be those two, Eleni, Lauren, and Annelisa. We have two transfers [coming in]. So although we will not get to defend our National Championship the way we had hoped, we should have a strong team ready for the challenge.”

I was curious about how much they got to practice or play this spring as some schools are just online only but JHU was able to practice for 2 months 3 days a week and mixed in some scrimmages, as well. Again, from Coach Troy, “So overall I’m feeling good about us being ready come fall.”

Coach Troy also mentioned his larger than normal roster and that will continue for this fall season, too.

I think the spring practices are huge and it has me worried about those conferences/schools that weren’t afforded the opportunity this past year. Time will tell on this.

I do want to thank Coach Troy for reaching out and since I think we should all know our (still) defending champions a little better, here is some info on the players mentioned in this article.

Natalie Aston – Middle/Setter coming off 2019 season with 1147 assists and 206 points. She should have graduated! Why didn’t you graduate?

Simone Bliss – Outside coming off 2019 season with 486 points. She should have graduated! Why didn’t you graduate?

Eleni Panagopoulos – Middle/Outside coming off 2019 season with 412 points. Couldn’t you have graduated early? Are you not applying yourself properly? Your parents don’t want to be paying for a fourth year of school!

Lauren Anthony – Middle coming off 2019 season with 273 points. Both you and Eleni could have graduated early and found an apartment together and gotten a job. Just saying.

Annelisa O’Neal – Setter and the only freshman off the National Champion team and really the only player that should be coming back. She had limited playing time but came up HUGE late in the season to fill in due to injuries.

As for the JHU recruits (freshmen), you know about Evelyn. (* eyeroll *) Here are the others:

Chidinma Onukwugha – 6′ 2″ middle out of Catonsville, MD. (Couldn’t find video.)

Emma Dionne – DS/L out of Cupertino, CA.

Simrin Carlsen – Outside out of Edison, NJ.

Roxy Karrer – Outside out of Los Altos, CA.

Virag Murphy – Middle out of Reston, VA.

Brooklyn Pater – Middle out of Sioux Falls, SD.

At this point, I have to remind Coach Troy that California is in the West Region, too. So, along with Evelyn, I’m not too happy with Emma or Roxy, either. In fact, I lived in Reston growing up for a year so Virag’s on my list, too.

In all seriousness, I’m glad JHU got to experience a little bit of the 2020 season (sort of) and I hope we can see as many of the former (well…current) champions as possible in 2021. The team was such a wonderful story and will certainly be interesting to follow in the fall.