SHS Varsity Girls Head Coach Sara Nuxol, Aurora Ahern, Molly Cocozza, Maggie Rogers, Aivy Lee, Sophia Chacon, Lexi Pint, London Guy, Katherine Curtis and JV Girls Head Coach John Cox. Photo credit Beach Media.

This past winter, the Sarasota High girls basketball team’s season featured some high points. Under second year head coach Sara Nuxol, the Sailors improved upon their 9-15 record in 2024-25, going 14-13 on the season in 2025-26. Senior Paisley Binswanger etched her name into the record books on January 16, surpassing 1,611 points to become Sarasota High’s all-time girls basketball leading scorer. Another achievement, however, came after the season had ended.

This August, the Florida Highschool Athletic Association (FHSAA) named the Sailors the Class 7A Academic State Champions, the top academic honor a team can earn. “It is the highest cumulative GPA in the state for everybody listed on our roster,” says Nuxol. “At Sarasota High, we hold ourselves to some high standards. I have great kids who are obviously high achievers academically, but are just very passionate about their grades. They take pride in their schoolwork, just as they do on their work on the court.”

While Coach Nuxol holds her players to a high standard academically—she doesn’t allow a grade lower than a “C” without a consequence—she says that much of the team’s academic success comes from within. The players, particularly the seniors, set a standard of academic excellence, which made it natural for underclassmen to follow suit. “It’s an ongoing joke that I have with them of, ‘Oh, I have a bunch of nerds on my team’, but they really are. They’re inquisitive kids who want to understand how things work and ensure that they are doing things the right way—they want to be the best at whatever they’re doing,” says Nuxol. “It’s not even fun to do grade checks with them, because they all have “A’s”.”

For Nuxol, who hopes to achieve this honor once more while winning a basketball state championship in the future, there is a strong correlation between success on the court and in the classroom. Both require the ability to focus and be truly present, compartmentalizing one play set just the same as a vocabulary word or mathematical equation. “The biggest thing that I’ve tried to instill in them from a basketball standpoint is that everything you do matters in some shape or form,” says Nuxol.

SHS Varsity Girls Head Coach Sara Nuxol, Aurora Ahern, Molly Cocozza, Maggie Rogers, Aivy Lee, Sophia Chacon, Lexi Pint, London Guy, Katherine Curtis and JV Girls Head Coach John Cox. Photo credit Beach Media.

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