All About Team

Steve Sica, the Cougars’ No. 1 runner on the boys side, was nursing a leg injury and had been unable to compete for almost four weeks. When his teammates trained, he stayed connected and did all that he could maintain his cardio-vascular conditioning in hopes of returning by November. While he accepted his challenges as a reality of sports and a fact of life, he yearned to jump back into the fray,

 

On this beautiful fall day in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Charlottesville, Sica hung with the coaches as his teammates ran their warmup. The plan once the race began was for him to go to a couple of spots on the two-loop course and cheer his guys on.

 

Moments after the gun sounded, though, Sica was nowhere to be seen. OK, no big deal, the head coach thought. He’s experienced. He knows the course. He’s just found a strategic spot at the top of some hill to offer support and encouragement.

Then, as the runners completed their first loop, here came Sica, running amidst the pack with a broad, oh-it-hurts-so-good smile on his face. The coach waved him off the course. He dutifully stopped, still smiling, and headed off to ice his leg, then rejoin his teammates when they completed the race.

 

“I laugh when I think about it,” Sica said one day recently. “In all practical terms, it was ill advised, but I really wanted to be in the race. I knew I had enough in the tank to get through 3.1 miles. It wasn’t really planned. It was more spontaneous. There was the team aspect of it, too.”

 

Of course, it was. As accomplished as he was in wrestling and running, both perceived by many to be individual endeavors, Sica was totally about team.

 

“Looking back, remembering your time as an athlete goes well beyond wins and losses and titles,” he said. “Those in-between moments are what make the experience so special. I have a greater appreciation of that at 43 than I did at 17 or 18. It’s nice to look back and be appreciative.”

 

A 2024 inductee into Collegiate’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Sica is his alma mater’s most decorated wrestler.

 

“Steve was a sponge for wrestling,” said Wortie Ferrell, who headed the Cougars’ program from 1995-2000. “He loved it. He immersed himself in it. He was a student of the sport and a great sportsman. He was diligent with learning technique. Because he was in a lower weight class, he was a tone-setter for what was to come. You knew you’d usually get six points right off the bat, and that energized the next 13 guys coming out there.”

 

Sica is Collegiate’s only three-time VISAA wrestling champion, twice in the 103-pound weight class and once at 119. He also was a three-time Prep League champ and twice was a prep All-American.

 

His 130 career victories rank third in program history. He recorded 17 pins during the 1998-99 season when the Cougars, a 2024 Hall of Fame team inductee, won both the league and state titles. For his accomplishments, team-first mentality, humility, resilience, and leadership, he earned the A.L. “Petey” Jacobs Sportsmanship Award in 2001, his senior year.

 

“Wrestling isn’t labeled as a team sport, but it is,” said Sica, who went on to wrestle at Wesleyan College before injuries ended his career. “You don’t go out there with other people, but what you do in the wrestling room with your partners is what gets you ready to compete. I didn’t do anything by myself. I had great teammates and great coaching.”

 

In addition to wrestling and cross country, Sica also competed in spring track.

 

His sophomore year, he was seeded 15th in the 3200 in the Prep League outdoor championship meet but outperformed the performance list en route to a fifth-place finish to earn valuable team points.

 

After much rehab work and a gait adjustment, he returned for what became a stellar senior cross country season, which he ended by finishing third in the Prep League and ninth in the VISAA and earning All-Metro honors as one of the top runners among all schools in Central Virginia.

 

“It doesn’t happen in a vacuum in terms of the three seasons,” he said. “One thing leads into another. I was really proud of what I did in cross country, coming back from injury and learning to do things in a different way. My motivation was watching my brother Chris (a 1997 graduate who also wrestled and ran distance). I tried to do things the way he did: working really, really hard and hoping it would pay off.”

~Weldon Bradshaw