High schools and their reputations are usually based on having a strong athletic program or for being a strong academic institution. At The Westminster School in Atlanta, they have both. The Westminster Wildcats have won 302 state championships in their history. That’s more than any other school in the state of Georgia.
(Note: 58 of those championships were won before the official GHSA championships were created.)
No matter how you cut it, that’s still a lot of excellence, and that’s the story of Westminster athletics. Before we look at the incredible achievements of Westminster (a private school competing against mostly public school opponents), we have to take a look at how academics was the foundation from which everything grew.
Niche.com, an internet-based company that produces comprehensive rankings, profiles, and report cards for schools, neighborhoods, and companies, gives Westminster top rankings in several areas of academia, including:
- No. 1 private school in Georgia.
- No. 1 Georgia high school STEM program.
- No. 1 top college prep school in Georgia (among private high schools).
- No. 89 out of 721 Georgia high schools for best schools for athletes.
- No. 26 out of 2650 nationally private K-12 schools in America.
- No. 28 top national STEM program among private schools in America.
The school’s average SAT score is 1450, and the average ACT score is 32, which ranks well above the state average of 1200 among all private schools in Georgia.
After looking at the strong academic profile of Westminster, it merely confirms what you already knew: Westminster is a prestigious school with a long history of producing our leaders of tomorrow in the areas of commerce, health, politics, the military, etc. However, that’s not the only area where Westminster has made a name for themselves.
One look at the overall results of Westminster’s athletic program tells a story of one of the most dominant athletic programs in the state of Georgia, regardless of classification, designation (private or public), titles, or wins.
- With 302 titles, they have more state championships than any other high school program in Georgia. That number includes 71 state titles in just the last decade.
- They won 13 state championships during the 2012-2013 school year. Four of those state championships were won in one day.
- They were awarded the GADA Directors Cup 19 of the last 20 years.
- They’ve won at least one state title every year since the school opened in 1951.
- The boys and girls soccer teams have won the most state championships.
- The 2021 girls soccer team and the 2019 boys soccer team were each crowned No. 1 in the country.
- They were chosen by MaxPreps as the top overall sports program in the country for the 2012-13 season, with 11 state titles and four state runner-up finishes.
- The boys and girls swim teams have a combined 55 state championships.
- The boys and girls cross country teams have won a combined 64 state championships, which makes it the most successful sport at Westminster.
- The girls tennis team leads all teams with a total of 48 state titles.
- The boys tennis team has won 47 state championships.
- Westminster has the state’s only squash team. In fact, they have the only squash team in the southeastern United States. The team is forced to play among themselves during the regular season, up until the time for the national high school squash tournament, which is usually held in the New England area. Despite only being able to play against outside opponents once a year at nationals, the Westminster squash team is regarded as one of the top squash programs in the country.
Westminster cross country coach Amy Eubanks, who has coached various sports during her 30 years-plus at the school, said it’s no accident that the school has achieved such success in both areas of academics and athletics.
“Our athletics and academics are each among the best in the state for a reason,” said Eubanks. “Parents want to place their kids in a school where the emphasis is on academics, but where athletics doesn’t suffer from that”.
Eubanks said there are several things that you can point to when looking back at Westminster’s history of building up its athletics. One is the faculty who allowed the addition of programs and made sure those programs flourished once they began. Bob Ward was the school’s athletic director from 1971-2000, and Eubanks said it was Ward who took a unique approach to growing athletics at Westminster.
“I’ve seen a lot of change at Westminster, but it was Coach Ward that oversaw the addition of more female sports,” said Eubanks. “Coach Ward was very committed to making female sports a big part of the school’s growth.”
Ward said his goal was to have more balance at Westminster, and that meant having more girls play sports.
“When I first started here at Westminster, many of the girls sports were only club sports,” said Ward.
He also stated that there were only around 10 girls running cross country when he started. With Eubanks overseeing cross country, the program quickly grew and today boasts over 100 members. Ward said the growth of girls sports didn’t happen overnight.
“It took us about 10 years to establish the girls athletic numbers that were even close to equaling the boys,” said Ward.
Current Athletic Director Tim Downes, who arrived at Westminster in 2015, said that the hard work of his predecessors have paid off.
“Today, there are 49% female student-athletes participating in sports at our upper (high) school at Westminster, compared to 51% boys,” said Downes.
He also mentioned that he’d actually like to see that number even up 50/50.
“Yes, it’s very good, but I want to see the girls at least at 50%, if not more,” said Ward.
One shining example of that effort to bring along the number of female student-athletes is Kelly Black-Holmes, a 1993 graduate of Westminster. She was a standout member of the girls basketball team and was inducted into the Westminster Breithaupt Athletic Hall of Fame.
She was heavily recruited by several colleges and made history by being the first female student-athlete at Westminster to be recruited by an Ivy League school. She ended up playing for Harvard University for four years.
This opened the door for future Westminster student-athletes to have opportunities to attend Ivy League schools, so much that now Westminster routinely sends its student-athletes to schools.
“Westminster pushed me to be the very best that I could be,” said Black-Holmes. “I wanted to be the very best basketball player that I could be, and I set specific goals to accomplish my dream. Those are the traits that Westminster taught me and continues to teach and encourage its students across whatever it is they strive to become, whether it’s the arts or athletics. They (Westminster) teach you how to strive to be the best you can be.”
Yet another first among female student-athletes at Westminster was Laura Effinger (Harris). She was the first student-athlete (male or female) to earn 16 letters. That’s lettering in four varsity sports in each of your high school years. She played and excelled in gymnastics, volleyball, track, and basketball. She received several scholarship offers, and ultimately chose to attend Princeton, where she played volleyball.
Effinger reflected on lettering in four different sports and how Westminster allowed her the opportunity to do what no one had ever done before: “It was very hard, but girls were really looked up to at Westminster and were encouraged to do everything the boys were doing.”
Her mother, Eleanor Howell Effinger, also attended Westminster and is also a member of the Westminster Sports Hall of Fame.
Rashad Bobby Jones was one of the few African-American students at Westminster when his parents enrolled him there in 1991 as a seventh-grader. His dad, Bob, played professional football for the Atlanta Falcons, and the family had been living in south Atlanta, where Rashad attended school before enrolling at Westminster.
“I was one of the rare kids from the southside of Atlanta that got a chance to go to Westminster,” he said. “I was just one of 15 black students in our class of a little over 200 students at the school. I helped diversify Westminster.”
While he may have helped the private school toward achieving another goal of equality, just as it had wanted to do with the gender gap, Jones said it was Westminster that helped him grow into a football player practically overnight.
“Coach Romberg (Gerry Romberg, the head football coach then and now) convinced my parents to let me try out for the football team,” said Jones. “Up to that point, I had played just one year of basketball at Westminster, but here I was now on the football team as an eighth-grader. We went to camp in South Carolina, and that’s where I learned the game of football. I was certainly the definition of a late bloomer.”
Jones learned quickly, and in his very first game, he scored a touchdown.
“It was against the Lovett School, and I had an interception that I returned 75 yards for a touchdown,” he said.
From there, Jones continued to get better and better and eventually started getting attention from college recruiters nationally. Jones said he received approximately 35 collegiate offers from popular college programs, including UGA and Alabama. But, Jones chose the Naval Academy, where he would play football, including in the Army/Navy game.
“I got my butt kicked every day at Annapolis,” he said. “But, it was the discipline I learned at Westminster and at the Naval Academy that prepared me for the real world. I graduated from the Naval Academy in 2001, with President Bush handing me my diploma.”
Then, 109 days later, the world changed.
“9/11 hit, and I was off to combat,” said Jones.
He has been in combat operations ever since, overseeing troops as a commander of navy operations in the Middle East. Jones is quick to credit his Westminster days for laying the foundation upon which he lives today.
“I can tell you that my experience both in the classroom and on the football field at Westminster prepared me for the real world challenges, including combat,” said Jones.
We were honored to have Westminster football alum Commander Rashad “Bobby” Jones speak to our team today. #FAMILY pic.twitter.com/1yycdAhkEZ
— Westminster Football (@Wildcatfbatl) November 2, 2021
Gerry Romberg has served as the head football coach at Westminster for 30 years, starting in 1992. He is currently the second longest tenured coach in Georgia, behind only Alan Chadwick of Marist. He led the Wildcats to the 2015 GHSA state championship, and the Wildcats have advanced to the state playoffs in 13 of the last 14 seasons. His Westminster team has won seven region titles, and his overall record is 215-129.
Romberg said Westminster has bounced back and forth between classifications 2A and 3A throughout his time as head coach, but in the latest reclassification cycle, Westminster is slated to move up to 4A beginning with the 2022-23 season.
Romberg has coached hundreds of players who have gone on to play collegiately and professionally. That list includes Harrison Butker, kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, and Blake Gilliken, punter for the New Orleans Saints. Carter Hawkins, who also played baseball at Westminster, is now the general manager of the Chicago Cubs.
Coach Sturniolo and the kickers with @Chiefs kicker and Westminster grad Harrison Butker. #gocats #gochiefs #BattleofBuckhead pic.twitter.com/LFbpT7gnkJ
— Westminster Wildcats (@WestminsterATH) October 21, 2017
One of the popular trends among high school football players, especially in the metro Atlanta area, is transferring to another school for the opportunity to see more playing time or perhaps a better chance of winning a championship. But, as Romberg points out, that’s not a likely scenario at Westminster.
“There is no recruitment or players transferring to Westminster,” said Romberg. “It’s tough to qualify here, and that’s a good thing. But it means that we play with the students that have pretty much grown up here at Westminster.”
Asked about the Wildcats’ biggest rival, Romberg said it is without a doubt The Lovett School, located approximately three miles away.
“They’ve always been our biggest rival, but the game in 1992 got really heated, so the series stopped for a while,” said Romberg.
The series was dubbed the Battle of Buckhead.
Westminster’s athletic programs flourished under the direction of Bob Ward and George “Rusty” Hudson, who oversaw the primary growth period of Westminster athletics during their consecutive tenure from 1971 until 2015. Ward served as the athletic director for the 25-year period of 1971-1996, with Hudson succeeding him in 1996 and serving as the athletic director until 2015.
Together, the men are credited for much of the growth of the athletics programs at Westminster, as they shared the same vision for success. Ward was responsible for moving many of the girls sports programs from club sports to GHSA-sanctioned teams.
When Hudson took over following Ward’s retirement, he said it was important to continue what his predecessor had started: “Bob had done such a great job of growing our girls’ sports, and I didn’t want to do anything to disrupt that.”
He added that Westminster wanted to make sure that it wasn’t only girls that had a chance to participate in sports.
“Despite being a private school by definition, the school made a conscientious effort to have an open door policy with regards to color and ethnicity,” said Hudson.
Every student was also required to pass all of the entrance exams, which Hudson admitted were tough, but that was by design.
“The school started with a goal of developing leaders by having the best students,” he said. “And when it came to the teachers, Westminster believed in excellence, so they hired only the best educators.”
As Westminster athletics continue to flourish from all of the hard work of those before him, Downes knows he must work hard to keep the Wildcats on the same pace that has led the school to more state championships than any other GHSA school.
Downes want to accomplish two primary goals. The first is to sustain and build on the teacher/coach model.
“Our coaches are also teachers, and making sure we continue to enhance and sustain that position is critical to our continued success academically and with athletics,” said Downes.
The second goal is to foster an ongoing, solid relationship within the GHSA.
“We want to make sure we solidify our position as a member of GHSA and to offer our support of the association,” he said.
Downes added that upgrading current facilities, as well as new construction of the school’s facilities, will help to ensure Westminster’s pledge to maintain athletic excellence.
Over 300 state championships says a lot about excellence, don’t you think?
