Clark commits to Holy Cross
Tolman High senior will join tennis program
A little of this, a little of that …
• Want to know what motivates Jeremy Clark every time he steps on the tennis court? All the Tolman High senior has to do is look through the fence.
“Seeing my parents and all my siblings at the matches … my loved ones. It motivates me to work harder,” said Clark. “I use them to boost me.”
Clark is the second youngest of nine siblings. Along with his parents Gary and Diane, he owns the kind of robust rooting section that through the years has been unwavering in their support.
For the Clark family, the good news is that they won’t have to drive far in order to see Jeremy once he moves onto the next phase of his tennis career. Shortly before Christmas, Clark verbally committed to join the men’s tennis program at the College of the Holy Cross.
“(Crusaders head coach Brad Walulak) really liked my game and knew that Holy Cross was close to my house and my family so they can go to my matches,” said Clark. “My parents work extremely hard and have sacrificed a lot for me to play tennis. I felt I had to return the favor, academically and athletically.”
How Clark landed on Holy Cross’s radar can be traced to the efforts of Mario Llano, owner of the R.I. Tennis Academy.
Clark was four when he first became a student at the academy that’s based out of the Centre Court indoor facility in East Providence. Under Llano’s watchful eye, Clark settled into a six-daysper-week routine at his unofficial home away from home.
“(Llano) played a huge role in my development as a player and a person,” said Clark. “He has a big name and definitely helped when it came to recruiting and figuring out what school I wanted to go to from a tennis standpoint.”
Being a lefthander in the tennis world certainly helped get Clark’s foot in the door. In his conversations with Walulak, the college coach supplied a few pointers while lauding Clark’s ability to return shots with his backhand.
“We talked over the phone every week over the past few months,” said Clark, a twotime all-stater who owns an 18-2 record in his two seasons as the No. 1 singles player on the Tolman/Shea Co-op team.
“I feel like I can be a major part of the program. That was one of the main reasons why I chose Holy Cross,” Clark added. “It was a perfect fit for me.”
A whiz in the classroom, Clark is a member of both the R.I. and National Honor Societies. He checked in with 4.054 grade-point-average and a class ranking of fifth at the end of the recently-completed first semester at Tolman. He plans to pursue a degree in the business field upon officially setting foot on the Holy Cross campus.
“It’s always been school first, then tennis,” said Clark. “That was my mom’s one big rule.”
If Clark ever needs extra motivation, all he has to do is look at his younger sister Aubrey, a middle school student who has Down Syndrome and Autism.
“She’s definitely one of the reasons why I push to work as hard as I can,” said Clark.
Looking ahead to his final season on the high school tennis circuit, Clark says the goal is to finish on the highest possible note – whether that includes a team title or a deep run in the individual singles tournament.
“I want to win, but I have to work hard. There’s some good competition out there,” he said.
• Courtesy of athletic director Anthony Ficocelli, some Central Falls High baseball hats have made their way to Aruba. Specifically, the hats were donated to the 297 Baseball Academy that’s overseen by Brodie Carey, a Bishop Feehan graduate who played college baseball for both the University of Maine and St. Bonaventure University. Ficocelli knows the Carey family through his son Mike’s association with the Upper Deck Academy.
• Appointments have been made to the two vacant varsity boys basketball assistant coaching positions that we first mentioned in last week’s edition of “A little of this, a little of that.”
At Lincoln, Jim Jahnz takes over for Jay Kelley, who elected to take a oneyear absence but plans to return as the top assistant to head coach Kent Crooks next season. Jahnz is the father of Josh Jahnz, a 2020 LHS graduate who was the starting point guard on the Lincoln squad that captured the 2019-20 Division III championship.
At Woonsocket, new head coach Dennis Harmon has tapped Thomas Gray as his top assistant. Gray was the architect behind the Woonsocket Middle School team that captured last year’s RIPCOA state championship.
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It proved to be well
worth the hassle to wear the tassel for Cumberland native Chris Wright, now the possessor of a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bryant University. With one semester remaining, Wright began taking classes this past fall. Then came a phone call from the San Francisco Giants, the team that drafted the lefty pitcher in the 12th round of the 2019 MLB Draft.
Joining the Giants’ fall Instructional League roster in Arizona could have led to Wright placing his educational pursuit on hold, but that wasn’t the case.
He received permission to continue learning online for six weeks – some mornings featured Zoom classes that given the time difference between Arizona and Bryant’s campus saw him log in at 4:45 a.m. – before making it back home for finals before Thanksgiving.
• After a nine-year head coaching stint that included two national college baseball championships at Division II West Chester, Lincoln High graduate Jad Prachniak is returning to the D-I ranks as the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of Delaware. As part of the press release, it was announced that Prachniak will work with the Blue Hens’ pitching staff.
Before West Chester, Prachniak served as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for William & Mary, which competes in the same conference as Delaware (Colonial Athletic Association).
• It’s the Interscholastic League’s intention to hold Unified Sports this year. As of this writing, the plan is to conduct Unified Volleyball in Season 3 (the one that includes football, girls volleyball, and competitive cheer) and Unified Basketball in Season 4 (the traditional spring season). The league has been in contact with Rhode Island Special Olympics which right now isn’t committing to team sports.
• Michael Green, Bryant University’s rising sophomore guard, had this to say about his freshman teammate, Pawtucket native/Shea High product Erickson Bans: “He’s doing well out there and is just trying to learn the college system … staying poised and understanding that it’s not high school. You have to play fast, but you also have to play smart.”
• It wasn’t a 2020 season to savor for Bill Belichick and the Patriots, though Coach Bill was able to salvage a little grace by declining to accept the Medal of Freedom. Guess the last thing that Belichick wanted was to have his name raked over the coals.
• Here we are, 2½ years later, and two of the state’s biggest roadblocks to the plan to keep the PawSox in Pawtucket no longer hold office in the Ocean State. Of course, we’re talking about Gina Raimondo and Nicholas Mattiello. Typical Rhode Island politics.
• Speaking of the PawSox and Pawtucket in wake of the lawsuit that came to light earlier this week, you had a feeling that the ending was going to get messy. After all, divorces are never pretty.
• No game against Georgetown on Saturday may prove to be a blessing in disguise for Jared Bynum, Providence’s injured point guard who has missed the past 2½ games with a groin injury. The Friars need Bynum to get healthy and have some time on their side with the next game scheduled for Wednesday at Creighton.
• This column would have been longer, but like the majority of you out there, I’m on pins and needles for games and meets involving our local winter high school sports teams to begin.