Hillcrest High School (Tuscaloosa, Alabama)

Hillcrest High School is public high school near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. The school is located in the unincorporated suburban area south of Tuscaloosa informally known as Taylorville. The school is administered by the Tuscaloosa County School System under the authority of the Alabama State Department of Education. The school currently enrolls around 1250 students in grades 9-12 and has a faculty of 75 teachers.

History

The school was opened in 1981 as a grade 7-12 high school when grade 10-12 students from the south Tuscaloosa County area were transferred from Holt High School to the already existing Hillcrest Junior High School in anticipation of growth in the area. The building that housed the school had opened in 1968 as a black elementary school and was later converted to an integrated junior high school.

In 1991, the current campus was opened for grades 9-12 (the former campus added grade 6 from feeder elementary schools to become Hillcrest Middle School). An expansion wing was added in 2002.

Athletics

Hillcrest participates in interscholastic athletics in Class 6A of the Alabama High School Athletic Association. The school's athletic squads are nicknamed the Patriots. The school's original nickname was the Red Devils but this nickname was changed after criticism and pressure from local church groups.

18 varsity sports are sponsored: 7 for boys (baseball, basketball, football, golf, soccer, tennis and wrestling), 6 for girls (women's basketball, golf, women's soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball) and 5 coed (cheerleading, cross country, track and field, swimming and JROTC).

In 2007, the baseball team won the 6A state championship. The following year the men's basketball team won the 6A state championship, which was Hillcrest's first 6A basketball championship. The 2010-2011 Varsity Basketball team conquered the state of Alabama again with another 6A state championship. Hillcrest defeated Murphy 48-46 on March 5, 2011 at the BJCC in Birmingham, Alabama to claim the 6A state title in basketball. This victory was Coach Scott Suttles' 400th career win in coaching 14 seasons as a high school basketball coach. In 2015, Hillcrest captured another state championship. The boys tennis team won the state tournament in Mobile, Alabama. Coach Armstrong and Coach Peirano led their players to its first tennis championship.

In 1993, JROTC became part of the Hillcrest athletic family. It is known throughout the Southeast for its physical fitness team, and includes all of the following teams: -Academic -Color Guard -Drill -Orienteering -Physical Training (PT) -Raider -Rifle As of 2015, Hillcrest JROTC will be offering varsity letters to all cadets on special teams.

Fine arts

In the 2008-2009 school year, the Hillcrest High School Wind Ensemble was accepted to the Music For All National Concert Band Festival in April 2009. The wind ensemble traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana and a program which included Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber by Paul Hindemith, Give Us This Day by David Maslanka, and Joseph Schwanter's ...and the mountains rising nowhere. In the summer of 2009, the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble was accepted to perform in the 2009 Midwest Clinic in Chicago, Illinois, making Hillcrest High the third group to attend the Midwest Clinic from the state. In May 2011, the Hillcrest High School Wind Ensemble traveled to China and performed a series of concerts in several different cities.

Notable alumni

• Tim Anderson, baseball player^[1]
• Brandon Medders, Former MLB player (Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants)
• D.J. White, Former NBA Player, currently for the Fujian Sturgeons of the Chinese Basketball Association

References

http://www.tcss.net/hillcresths

External links

• Official school website
• Official Hillcrest Wind Ensemble website

Coordinates: 33°07′46″N 87°32′16″W / 33.12955°N 87.53764°W / 33.12955; -87.53764