Since 1997, Starr’s Mill has collected trophies from almost every tournament attended. The school now has a massive problem, too many trophies and not enough space. Starr’s Mill initially considered ridding the school of extra weight by purging all of the unwanted and unnecessary trophies.

Principal Allen Leonard finally decided that it was time to get rid of a few. “[The administration] found that [the school] has a lot of trophies that while they were very meaningful at the time they were won they don’t really hold up,” Leonard said. He isn’t sure how many trophies the school currently holds, but “anything that is flat and could hold a trophy holds one,” Leonard said.

The administration has already started clearing out the cases of trophies that line the halls, gym, and library. Leonard is trying to contact the sponsors or coaches who earned each trophy, but is not sure what he is going to do if the groups do not have space for the trophies either.

Coaches at the Mill will be given the trophies and will have to figure out what to do with them. “And if the coaches don’t want them, they will have to store them in boxes and put them away,” front office secretary Leslie Frey said.

While deciding which trophies to keep and display, Leonard opted for a reshuffling and reorganization rather than a purging. Frey has been given the task of cataloging the trophies for school records and then handing them off to decide how they will be displayed or stored.

During the cataloging process, Leonard found a girls’ JV softball trophy from 1997. “I would guess that that is the school’s very first trophy athletics-wise at least, and those kinds of things we’ll keep because that’s the history of the school. It’s that kind of gray middle [the third and fourth place trophies] of things that we need to simply open up space for other trophies,” Leonard said.

One question remains: Will this reshuffling of trophies solve the problem as the school continues to have success?