It was an exciting day at St. Anthony on Thursday as the Saints honored their student athletes from the Class of 2026 that will be continuing their academic and athletic careers at the collegiate level.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a wonderful afternoon,\u201d St. Anthony president Christine Tucker said. \u201cIt\u2019s my honor and privilege to be here with each of you to recognize our student athletes that are moving on to amazing experiences ahead of now. This is a very, very, very important milestone not only for our school \u2013 because it reflects our mission as developing the potential of very well rounded women and men.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Saints recognized six athletes that will be competing at the next level from the four-year institutions to the community college level.<\/p>\n
Laila Hughes will be heading to Alabama where she will be attending Tuskegee University where she will play basketball and study to become a nurse. Hughes was a key member of the Saints\u2019 girls basketball team and was a second-team Del Rey League selection her senior year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely rewarding,\u201d Hughes said of having the opportunity to play at the next level. \u201cEspecially just all the hardships of high school basketball itself. It definitely pays off in all those four years. It\u2019s just a reward, but it\u2019s also just a milestone because I still have so much more to work for in the future. So it just reminds me of what else I have to work for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes will be moving but won\u2019t be far from where she was born in Georgia. She\u2019s also looking forward to the culture she will be around living in the South.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people. It\u2019s a culture shock. I think Southern hospitality and everything is going to be a huge difference for me,\u201d Hughes said. So I\u2019m excited to meet people and experience different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hughes will be joined by Jordyn Washington and Dallyn Knox who will also continue their athletic careers at the community college level. Washington, a first-team Del Rey League selection, will continue her career at Mt. San Antonio College.<\/p>\n
Knox, a second-team Del Rey League selection, will be staying local to attend Cypress College to continue hooping.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lolesio-Pua family will be adding to their rich rugby background as Nila and Sydney will be attending Life University. Nila has earned a full-ride scholarship to play rugby in Georgia.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201dI\u2019m really looking forward to the new team I\u2019m about to be exposed to,\u201d Nila said. \u201c It\u2019s pretty far, and I\u2019m going to miss my family, but it\u2019ll all be worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Esten Wilson will continue his basketball career when he joins College of the Desert in the fall where he will study Kinieseology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very happy and proud of these six student-athletes for their dedication, sacrifice and resilience that they showed to accomplish a goal of wanting to play their respective sport at the next level,\u201d St. Anthony athletic director Vince Nolasco said.\u00a0 \u201cWe are very grateful for everything they did as students-athletes at St. Anthony High School.\u00a0 Always remain hungry and humble and always work for your goals and dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was an exciting day at St. Anthony on Thursday as the Saints honored their student athletes from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-338552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}