Created by Principal Gregory Shelby, the start of the 2025-2026 school year saw the start of a new captain’s council, which includes a series of meetings during Tutorial between the season’s sports captains. The hope is that a solidarity can be formed between the different teams to help discuss what attributes make a strong sports team.
Senior cross country captain Aidan Wu described the captain’s council as meetings implemented to build strength between teams and teach captains how to improve their leadership.
“They pull us out of the tutorial, and then all the captains meet together. They go over some team building stuff and attributes of a strong sports team,” Wu said. “(They) try to get the captains to know each other within the sports to make one Santa Clara High School team. We’re all supporting each other.”
Wu, however, has expressed hesitation on the helpfulness of the meetings in forming connections between sports teams.
“I think it’s useful to get to know the other sports and the captains of other sports, but there’s not much interaction between sports. It’s not that sort of skill is used very often,” Wu said. “So I wouldn’t say it’s been super helpful, but it hasn’t been harmful in any way.”
Similarly, senior water polo captain Kiran Sivasubramanian pointed out that the differences between sports makes it difficult to learn from each other and the effectiveness of captain’s council more limited.
“I think that it’s a bit difficult to learn from other sports because the teams at the school are so distinct,” Sivasubramanian said. “Cross country is a very different team sport than water polo. In cross country, you are kind of competing against yourself, but in water polo, you’re competing with your team, and you win as a team, whereas some other sports are a bit more individual.”
Senior field hockey captain Ina Forzetting described the captain’s council meetings as insincere, not the informational and supportive meetings she thought they would be.
“It felt like a mandatory thing that they had to tell us like, ‘You have to be a team player. You have to be respectful,’ which obviously, yes. But also, I feel like as a team leader, you already know that. The exercises that they had us do just felt elementary,” Forzetting said. “It wasn’t helpful, the circumstances weren’t realistic and no one was passionate about doing it.”
Despite varying doubts in the effectiveness of the new captain’s council tutorial meetings, physical education teacher and football coach Adrian Castillo has noticed changes in the captain’s sense of progressive team and communication and hopes to see the meetings continue throughout the seasons.
“I feel like there’s still plenty of work that we can do as far as getting our message through the captains to the teams,” Castillo said. “But overall, I think we are making progress as far as how we want to model our captains.”
Forzetting, amidst her hesitancy, believes that with some effort and modifications, the captain’s council could be helpful for captains in future seasons.
“I like the captain’s council,” Forzetting said. “I like the idea of it, but I feel like if you’re going to have a captain’s council, have a meeting not a seminar on how to deal with conflict.”
Regardless of the opinions regarding the captain’s council meetings, many coaches and captains believe in providing a supportive environment for players from all sports.
“I hope we can keep mentoring these young athletes and make sure they know that we’re here to support them in these big roles,” Castillo said. “Always have an open mind. Be willing to try something new.”