Over the past four years, Brunswick High has been progressively making itself known not just in Frederick County, but state-wide, for its extracurricular and academic achievements. In 2021, Brunswick Boys Soccer won the MPSSAA Class 1A State Championship, only to create a feeling of déjà vu a year later. Nearly in sync with their peers, Brunswick Girls Soccer had competed in the Class 1A girls soccer state championship in 2021 and won the Class 1A regional final the year thereafter. Further exemplifying triumph in extracurricular activities, Brunswick’s varsity football team has made similar strides, having played their best season in 10 years while simultaneously being named 1A State Semifinalists. Examples of BHS’s newly found prosperity go on.

      Before 2021, Brunswick Boys and Girls Soccer had gone five and nine years without contending in state championships respectively. It’s difficult to be confident in a definitive cause for such improvement, though both programs had introduced new coaches preceding newfound success, one of whom had been a former player in the program they currently lead. Brunswick Football had also introduced a new quarterback during the 2021-2022 season, notably being exclusively featured in an article by the Frederick News-Post for exemplary in-game performance.

     Though still extracurricular, in the context of academic achievement, the Roaders Academic Team has won the Frederick County Academic Tournament twice since 2019. James Kelly, one of Brunswick’s science teachers and coach of the team, says the team is “consistently growing,” though “better people will care when Brunswick gets a new building.” Two alumni will be or are currently attending one of the top 20 best national universities, ranked for the 2022-2023 academic year, according to US News respectively. See more on these two students, in Ava Stiglicz’s article “BHS Goes Ivy League” On the topic of academic achievement, Brunswick is currently among the top 28% of high schools in the nation ranked by US News.

     Despite BHS’s recent and unprecedented achievements, the school falls victim to great inequity within Frederick County. On Wednesday, May 3, 2023, Brunswick students will be heard for the last time regarding their request for expedited construction of a new high school. BHS’s building is the oldest in the county out of all other high schools, though its planned construction initially intended to take place in 2022 had been tabled until the 2028-2029 school year. This has proven an issue, as Brunswick’s population is growing at a rate of around 2% annually.

     Aside from the issue of overpopulation, during a board of education meeting on April 19, 2023, Brunswick senior Jacob Winter exclaimed a student had informed him “drains in the girls’ bathrooms drain incredibly slowly to the point where they overflow” and another student had told him that during girls soccer season “the girls’ locker room was constantly backed up with sewage water, pooling the floors, making it occasionally unsafe to enter.” Issues such as these remain largely unheard of in all other, newer, high schools in Frederick County.

     Overall, despite the challenges Brunswick faces, the school has shown no stunts in showing exceptional accomplishments universally. If you’d like to keep up with Brunswick High, ensure to follow the BHS Gazette on Twitter and Instagram @BHSGazette.