Last weekend we celebrated the athletics accomplishments of
the winter term. Athletes, coaches, and parents packed the dining hall to
listen to Athletics Director Bob Howe provide a synopsis of each team’s season
and to hand out awards to those athletes named by their coaches or captains as
most improved, most valuable, or the recipient of another award. The event
provided wonderful recognition of the accomplishments of our athletes and
emphasized the values of camaraderie, team spirit, and hard work over the final
standings of any particular team. It was lovely to see 9th and 10th
graders acknowledged and standing proudly alongside seniors and postgraduates.
One of the highlights of the event was the recognition of
music teacher Mary Sand. If any member of our community had been asked which
faculty member was once a world-class athlete and had appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, few people would
have identified Mary—a testament to her modesty and understated style. The
female Apolo Ohno of her day, Mary Sand—then Mary Novak—won 18 U.S. and North
American championships in short- and long-track speed skating.
Bob also invited Harry Sheehy, the long-time athletics
director and before that men’s basketball coach at Williams College, to address
the crowd. A key aspect of the Loomis Chaffee athletics philosophy is that we
encourage our students to be athletics all-rounders because we believe that it
is too early for them to specialize in a particular sport. I have very much
enjoyed seeing the same athlete compete in soccer in the fall, basketball in
the winter, and lacrosse in the spring or some other combination of sports.
Mr. Sheehy endorsed this approach, and he decried the
growing specialization and professionalism of high school athletics. He pointed
out that playing a combination of sports allows a student to mature physically
without risking injuries such as stress fractures and muscle tears. He also
emphasized the importance of enjoying high school athletics—most of our
students will not make a career out of their athletics talent and most will not
be able to parlay their talent into a college admissions acceptance. I thought
that the most important piece of advice that he gave the students was to be
sure that they could sign off on their day’s work—whatever it was—with
integrity.
Mr. Sheehy wrapped his presentation into a captivating
series of anecdotes that mixed humor and tragedy, life lessons and philosophy.
You can listen to a podcast of Mr. Sheehy’s speech on our website, and you can
also read his book, Raising a Team
Player: Teaching Kids Lasting Values on the Field, on the Court, and on the
Bench. I highly recommend these to you.
