Hello Spartans!
I hope this newsletter finds you well and you are all enjoying the summer. While the school year is still a few weeks away, this is an exciting time to be a Spartan. As you know, we are about to begin our first CHSAA competition. We will have boys’ soccer, golf, and cross country in the fall. For the girls, we will have volleyball and cross country as well. If you are interested in playing, it is important that you register now as the seasons are ready to begin. Golf is the first sport to start, and the first official practice will be on Monday, Aug. 1. The rest of the teams will begin on Monday, Aug. 8. To participate in practice, you must officially register and submit an updated physical. Below are links to the registration platform and the physical form. You can also find these on our school website under the School Experience tab.
Please note that practices begin prior to the first day of school. For golf, it is over a week before the school year starts. While we may accept late registrations, each CHSAA sport has a minimum number of practices a student must participate in prior to the first competition. That means that people who register late may not be able to play in the first couple of games. Also, we cannot allow a student to participate without an updated physical. Even if you submitted an up-to-date physical in the spring, please resend it to us to avoid confusion so you or your student don’t miss a practice. Please send all physicals to Nicole Rost at nicole.rost@stemk12.org.
Fees:
Our athletic and activity programs are sustained through student fees. The registration fees you pay for athletics cover the cost of coaches, officials, equipment, uniforms, and field/facility rental. The athletic fee is $350 (plus registration fees) and must be paid during registration on the SportsEngine site. You cannot complete the registration process without paying and cannot practice or play without registering.
The fee for eSports registration is $150. This covers our administrative costs, which include our team fees to participate on the eSports platform. We would like to create a school-wide booster program to provide fundraising opportunities to help cover some of our costs. Please stay tuned for more information on that.
eSports
Are you interested in playing eSports? If so, the fall season is also ready to begin. Preseason competition begins on September 5th, and regular season competition starts on September 26th. If you are interested in playing, we will need to register our teams before Monday, Sept. 5, so we can be ready to go. Here is the tentative eSports schedule for the fall season.
- Tuesdays: League of Legends and Splatoon 2 will compete.
- Wednesdays: Super Smash Bros Ultimate will compete
- Thursdays: Rocket League, Madden, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Hearthstone will compete.
NBA 2K23 is planning a mid-September game release. With that in mind, there will be an independent schedule that will be released at a later date.
eSports registration is also open on our website, however, I would encourage you to recruit your team and register as a group. We can enroll as many teams as we want. However, only two teams per game can participate in the state playoffs. If you want to play eSports but cannot fit it into your busy schedule, there will be a spring season that begins on Tuesday, Feb. 7. Please watch future newsletters for more information. Also, each team has the opportunity to register bench players. This may be a good option for you if you want to belong to one of the teams but don’t have the time to practice with the team. If this is something that you are interested in, please let us know when we send out the eSports interest survey.
Click the button below if you have your eSports team and are ready to register. The registration cost is $150 plus fees and will be paid as part of the registration process.
Winter Sports
This winter, we will offer both boys’ and girls’ basketball. Both seasons will officially begin on Monday, Nov. 14. We will begin the season in the Panorama gym, but if the construction of the new gym stays on schedule, we should be able to play the second half of the season here at STEM! This could be a wonderful opportunity to set new traditions as we become the first athletic teams to play here at home. Registration for winter sports will open in September, however, it is never too early to begin to recruit your STEM friends to play as well!
Spring Sports
Spring Sports will officially begin on Monday, Feb. 27. We officially have a girls soccer and boys and girls track. For boys lacrosse, we have officially entered a co-op with Highlands Ranch High School, so all boys wanting to play high school lacrosse will have an opportunity to play as part of that team. We would also like to expand our programming and offer girls tennis and golf. There will be informational meetings about those programs later this fall to determine the level of interest.
Now that we are a CHSAA-sanctioned school, all STEM students who are interested in playing school sports must play for STEM or the school co-op if the programs are offered. If we do not offer the sport for all other high school sports, you are still eligible to play for another school. For example, if you have played football with Ponderosa in the past, you will continue to play for Ponderosa because we do not have a football program. However, if you ran track for Ponderosa (or any other high school) in the past, you must now compete for STEM because we have a team here.
Finally, if you are new to STEM and participated in high school sports last year at a different school, we must complete the CHSAA transfer process to determine whether or not you will have athletic eligibility here. So if you or your student are a new 10th, 11th or 12th grade, played high school sports at a different school last year and want to play here, please reach out to me ASAP so we can begin the process. You can email me at ryan.alsup@stemk12.org .
Thanks, everyone. If you have any questions about high school athletics, please feel free to reach out anytime!
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Sincerely,
Ryan Alsup
High School Director
Go Spartans!!!