Triplets emerge as stars in three different sports at same school
It's not particularly unusual for brothers to channel their internal competitiveness as a means to achieve athletic greatness. That competitiveness is sometimes even more constructive between twins, who can also share a deeper bond with each other. Not surprisingly, the same can be said for triplets, though groups of three come along much less frequently.
Usually, because of familial dynamics and parental influence, twins and triplets wind up playing the same sport together. Yet that's anything but the case with the Arsenault triplets, who star for three different spring sports at Shawnee (N.J.) High.
In fact, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the brothers' disagreements when playing together on the same teams were significant motivating factors in pushing them into different sports.
"We would fight all the time," Tyler Arsenault, who stars for the Shawnee tennis team, told the Inquirer. "You can be your own person out there [while paying tennis]."
Tyler Arsenault's impulse has been shared by the three brothers, who have all gone their own way en route to multi-sport success for the family and school. While Tyler is the No. 2 tennis player for Shawnee, Connor Arsenault is the starting third baseman for the Shawnee baseball team and Zach Arsenault is the number 1 golfer and anchor for the school's standout boys golf program.
As each has gone their own way, the Arsenaults have moved beyond their youth, when there were often lumped together into a single unit as they struggled together in baseball, basketball and other traditional sports.
"People would say, 'Here come the triplets,' " the brothers' father, Jim Arsenault, told the Inquirer. "It was like they were referred to as a unit. I think they wanted to kind of get away from that."
Only one of the juniors, Tyler, plays two varsity sports (he also starts on the Shawnee soccer team in the fall), and while all three brothers go their own way in and around school, they still travel to school together in the family's Honda Accord, creating a comical scene with a full load of bags in the backseat with Zach, who is forced into the backseat. In addition to a golf bag, baseball bag and tennis bag, Zach has to wedge himself in among discarded remnants that the triplets' mother Donna Arsenault described to the Inquirer as "a collection of discarded Gatorade bottles, food wrappers, candy wrappers, plastic containers, and assorted other trash."
The reason for Zach's banishment to the back?
"He's the smallest and he can fit back there," Tyler said of Zach.
Spoken like a true brother. Even if they do play different sports now, they still treat each other just as they always did.
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