LHHS' Wilson Gillespie (12) and Trevor Atkins play lacrosse on the Hillcrest team which recently won the state championship. Courtesy photo.
If you attended the Lake Highlands High School Senior Show or Red White Game expecting to see the shenanigans of the four Bell Boys, you may have noticed the absence of Wilson Gillespie. Wilson was in Shenandoah, Texas, near Houston, helping his team win the Texas High School Lacrosse League Championships.
Wilson and LHHS senior Trevor Atkins play for Hillcrest, which went into the state Division II finals against Houston Clear Lake with a 15-2 record. Trevor was named MVP of the game and has signed to play college lacrosse at Colgate, where his sister Avery plays soccer.
“Not just winning state, but the road to winning state was something else,” Wilson told me. “This is something the captains and I have been working for our whole lacrosse career. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ending to my senior year.”
Wilson admitted to being occasionally frustrated at the lack of attention generated by lacrosse in Texas. “Even the high school we were representing (Hillcrest) didn’t recognize us. Trevor Atkins, one of the leading scorers in the nation, wasn’t even recognized [for his accomplishments] at the great high school of Lake Highlands.”
Wilson, who’s headed off to Aggieland after graduation, says he learned some valuable lessons from playing the game. “As cliché as it sounds, hard work really does pay off. Our practices ran from 4:30 to 7, and at the beginning of the season it would be dark by 6, so we would just run for the last hour. That separated us from the competition. The best part about winning state was the payoff for all of the time and work that we put in.”
Wilson, Trevor and a teammate pose with the State Championship trophy
