State of the Athletics: PCA sees growth in teams now, TIC upcoming

Published 9:15 pm Saturday, May 10, 2025

By Jason O. Boyd

Note: This is the fourth in a series of stories where we talk to each high school athletic director in Beaufort County. We asked them about this season, the offseason, what they are looking forward to for the start of the fall season and more.

BELHAVEN, N.C. — Growth can take longer than some people want. But it does happen eventually. Pungo Christian Academy Athletics Director Logan Van Staalduinen can attest to that.

After having a bevy of seniors that helped lead the Raiders to athletic success at many levels last season, a younger crop of athletes had to navigate the process before eventually finding success. The Raiders also had to deal with injuries to some of their athletes, limiting in some cases the number of players on the team.

At the same time, seeing success began to happen toward the end of the season in several sports. With the 2024-25 school year set, those athletes will be tested again starting this fall when the Tarheel Independent Conference adds Kerr-Vance Academy, Halifax Academy and Oakwood School to the league.

We spoke with Van Staalduinen about growth, success and potential for this school year and next.

So kind of give me a synopsis of the season and how it went for you.

“I think from an administrative perspective, everything went as well as it could on this year. We hosted TIC tournaments for the first time since 2018-19. That’s always a challenge, you know, when you’re hosting a number of teams from your conference and a variety of sports throughout the year. And our parents did just an outstanding job helping us, you know, manning gates, putting extra workers in concessions, planning our booster club and tournament planning committee.

“When you look at it in terms of wins and losses, I feel like this year we were kind of down a little bit. Whenever you graduate a class of 24 students at a small school like we have and, you know, 19 or 20 of them were athletes and multi-sport athletes, it kind of turns into a rebuilding year for a lot of our sports. But even in rebuilding years, I felt like we were still competitive across the board from the middle school, JV and varsity levels. You know, we didn’t bring home as many conference championships as we’re accustomed to. But with that being said, I felt like we had a number of teams overachieve and we had a number of teams meet or even go above and beyond what their expectations were that had high expectations going in, I should say.”

What were the things that you wanted to work on or kind of see improve?

“If you’re talking to me really as an athletic director, I think things are where they should be when it comes to … you know, we’ve hired great coaches. We’re making improvements to facilities slowly but surely as they go along, and I think from a coach’s standpoint, you know, we’ve got good athletes here.

“I think the thing that hurt us this year was that we were just younger and more inexperienced. You know, the past several years, we’ve been upper-class heavy. You know, we’ve been able to have older kids on varsity, you know, have your younger kids on the JV and then even field middle school teams with the youngest kids. And then we kind of had that age balance and experience balance where we were kind of able to be competitive across the board where this year, when you look at a lot of our teams and whether it was due to kids graduating or even having some big injuries throughout the season, forcing younger kids to move up, we just weren’t as experienced as a lot of the other teams. And we kind of lacked that, you know, physical maturity as well as just overall maturity, I think, across a number of sports. And while we still had decent success, I think the older these kids get and the more that they continue to work at their craft, the better we’re going to be here in the next few years.”

“You know, we are looking, we really want to expand our weight room use and get more athletes in there. The booster club has made some financial commitments in the past few years, buying some training aids like rebounding machines and pitching machines. And we want to continue to kind of upgrade those needs for our student athletes so that they, you know, I don’t want there to be any excuse why they can’t improve.

“And we also want to see growth as a person. We want to see that maturity. We want to see, you know, dependability and certain characteristics evolve throughout the season, where we really feel like we’re not just building an athlete. You know, we’re building a person. (8:30) We’re trying to bring up good Christian men and women, or young boys and girls, so that we can, when they leave here, they’re going to be better off than when they came and they’re going to go out and be productive members of society.”

Are there any capital projects or anything that you’re working on?

“I have to say, our baseball coach, Chad Alligood, has put in a lot of sweat equity into improving our baseball field. There’s still a lot that has to be done in terms of turf management, which is a big thing that we’re trying to get on this summer. We’ve done a lot of fencing projects recently, trying to make our baseball field look more like an actual baseball field than just a big plot of land. And so I’ve been happy about those developments.

“But they’re just at such the beginning stage that, you know, it doesn’t make sense for me just to say like, you know, ‘Oh, hey, we’re going to do this big project yet.’ There’s still a lot of fine-tuning. But, you know, ever since I got here in 2019, I’ve recognized that, you know, we have an old school. We do not have a lot of land and we have limited resources to be able to go out and do certain projects. But with that being said, my goal has always been we’ve got to do the best of what we’ve got and we’ve got to get better each year.”

“What are you looking forward to the most with the new season?

Well, I think the biggest thing that’s going to bring the most excitement next year is that our conference is growing from five to eight schools. Oakwood School out of Greenville, Halifax Academy out of Roanoke Rapids, and Kerr-Vance Academy out of Henderson. They have all agreed to join the TIC next year. And that’s going to bring a lot of competition, a lot more competition, I should say, to our league. That, really, in my opinion, outside of boys and girls basketball, and you could even make an argument for boys and girls basketball, that in terms of 1A conferences, that’s going to be probably one of the toughest leagues to win. I mean, when you look at the past state champions from the last five to seven years in every sport, like I said, with the exception of boys’ and girls’ basketball, those eight schools that you see are pretty much the state champions in almost every sport.

“You’re going to have to play Kerr-Vance Academy twice a year in volleyball. Oakwood School’s got a fantastic soccer program. You’re going to get them twice a year. And they’ve got a state championship-level cross country program there that our conference hasn’t really seen ever. And so that’s going to not only make our conference be more competitive, but I think the schools within our conference are also going to get pushed more than what we’ve been in the past where it’s not, you know, for a really good team, it’s not going to be a cakewalk to the finals. You know, it’s going to be a grind week in and week out.”

More Pungo Raiders

Familiar face back at PCA: Victor Chavez holds soccer camp for fall prospects

Taking a look at each of the Beaufort County high school football schedules

Four from PCA earn NCISAA All-State honors

Junior legion team off to good start; Team looking for big things this season

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