Friday I had the distinct pleasure of watching Park’s Mock Trial compete and win the State Finals. The trial was held in Annapolis and Judge Joseph Murphy, Maryland’s Chief Judge of the Court of Special Appeals, presided over the case. I watched via webstream which was an up and down experience, but a bit more about that later.
Park’s team has enjoyed great success under Coach Tina Forbush, assisted this year by Tony Asdourian. In eleven years, Park has won two championships and has had two second-place finishes. As you watch the competition unfold, you realize that the preparation must be intense, and I imagine our coaches facilitated this task masterfully. The first thing I noticed as I started watching was how quickly you forget that these are high school students competing in a fictional situation. Both teams delivered a professional performance.
Our role at the championship match was the plaintiff. Our three attorneys, Eli Block, Tanika Lynch, and Daniel Stern were nothing short of brilliant. I can say without reservation that based on our championship record, our defense team must be just as able.
The Park attorneys questioned their witnesses with precision and grace—two qualities that many professional litigators would benefit from having. They were poised and their manners were impeccable. You never lost sight of the fact that this was a competition, but one of the most heartwarming moments came when the judges retired to reach a verdict and both teams congratulated each other in what seemed to be a most genuine manner.
Judge Murphy asked the attorneys some tough questions, and on top of that they had to examine ‘hostile’ witnesses, which is never easy, but these kids never flinched. There were a few moments for each team where they had to back track, rethink their approach and proceed, and our team rose to the occasion each time. I highly recommend that you check this out at http://www.courts.state.md.us/education/mocktrial.html (Watch the timer on the video; the trial begins just after 10:00.)
So Park brings home a state championship. You won’t read about it in The Sun—although you can read about an awful lot of lacrosse, softball, and baseball games that happened on Friday. Local schools were even webstreaming lacrosse games on that afternoon. I love high school sports and think they’re great, but the Park kids were doing something equally, if not more, spectacular. This was truly a battle of wits and guile. I watched on the edge of my seat, and almost jumped out of it at one point during the closing argument that I believed sealed the victory. I have no idea if any of these competitors will go on to be practicing attorneys, but I do know that using their analytical skills, powers of inquiry and oration, command and poise will serve them well for a lifetime.
Way to go Park Mock Trial Team---You Rock!
Monday, April 18, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Fantasy and The Ties that Bind
Well at least I made you look. Fantasy refers to fantasy baseball of course. It’s a term which makes me very uncomfortable but we’ll get to that later. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fantasy baseball, well, I envy you. Fantasy baseball (“Fantasy”) is an opportunity for a group of 8-12 regular people to draft real major league baseball players and create a team. Your team competes against your league mates’ teams and the outcomes are based on the stats of the real baseball players--and this is supposed to be fun.
As the real baseball season kicks off this week, so do countless Fantasy leagues, including one that was conceived at The Park School 10 years ago. The group, which originally consisted of students and faculty, is still going strong a decade later after the students graduated from Park, and graduated from college, and moved on to graduate school and professional lives. (The faculty members are still stuck here.) In speaking to two of the founding members of this Park league, history teachers Peter Warren and John Kessinger, I learned some important stuff (and never mind about the unimportant stuff). The important stuff was that the following folks have participated in this league: Adam Dunn ’02, Dan Flamholz ’02, Robbie Gross ’02, Brian London ’02, Zac Milner ’03, Tyler Rorison ’03, Ben Hyman ’06, Dan McGill ’10, science teacher Elliott Huntsman, Upper School principal Mike McGill, and, who it seems is Commissioner for Life, Ben Jacobs ’02.
No matter how you feel about Fantasy, how great is it that these teachers and students (now alumni) are still at it? Most schools promote the significance of the teacher-student relationship for obvious reasons. This league is one tangible example that speaks to friendship and real connections. I’m sure for all of them it is also a great time, well except maybe for Ben. Being the Commissioner is a non-stop headache. More about that in a moment. Peter and John were quick to point out that Ben was perfect for this role in that he was masterful in dispute resolution. So I wish the league Happy Tenth Anniversary, and Ben a dispute-free year or at least one day without trouble.
I must confess that Fantasy has played a sordid role in my life as well. I am so old that to me this habit is known as Rotisserie baseball. Like poor Ben, I served as Commissioner of my league, but Commissioner only. When I did have a team for a few brief weeks, the conflict it caused when my Fantasy players competed with the Orioles was too much to bear. I ran the league for many years with law school pals. Talk about disputes! But these Fantasy ties do bind us, and now I am the silent co-owner of a team with longtime Park friend, Michael Stiller ’85. He’s the brains, and I run the in-stadium promotions.
So this season is just beginning for Fantasy baseball, Major League Baseball, and Park baseball. Fantasies about Fantasy abound. Whether your life is empty enough that you play or full enough that you don’t, take a look around at the ties that bind you to friends and mentors, Park or otherwise, and celebrate them.
As the real baseball season kicks off this week, so do countless Fantasy leagues, including one that was conceived at The Park School 10 years ago. The group, which originally consisted of students and faculty, is still going strong a decade later after the students graduated from Park, and graduated from college, and moved on to graduate school and professional lives. (The faculty members are still stuck here.) In speaking to two of the founding members of this Park league, history teachers Peter Warren and John Kessinger, I learned some important stuff (and never mind about the unimportant stuff). The important stuff was that the following folks have participated in this league: Adam Dunn ’02, Dan Flamholz ’02, Robbie Gross ’02, Brian London ’02, Zac Milner ’03, Tyler Rorison ’03, Ben Hyman ’06, Dan McGill ’10, science teacher Elliott Huntsman, Upper School principal Mike McGill, and, who it seems is Commissioner for Life, Ben Jacobs ’02.
No matter how you feel about Fantasy, how great is it that these teachers and students (now alumni) are still at it? Most schools promote the significance of the teacher-student relationship for obvious reasons. This league is one tangible example that speaks to friendship and real connections. I’m sure for all of them it is also a great time, well except maybe for Ben. Being the Commissioner is a non-stop headache. More about that in a moment. Peter and John were quick to point out that Ben was perfect for this role in that he was masterful in dispute resolution. So I wish the league Happy Tenth Anniversary, and Ben a dispute-free year or at least one day without trouble.
I must confess that Fantasy has played a sordid role in my life as well. I am so old that to me this habit is known as Rotisserie baseball. Like poor Ben, I served as Commissioner of my league, but Commissioner only. When I did have a team for a few brief weeks, the conflict it caused when my Fantasy players competed with the Orioles was too much to bear. I ran the league for many years with law school pals. Talk about disputes! But these Fantasy ties do bind us, and now I am the silent co-owner of a team with longtime Park friend, Michael Stiller ’85. He’s the brains, and I run the in-stadium promotions.
So this season is just beginning for Fantasy baseball, Major League Baseball, and Park baseball. Fantasies about Fantasy abound. Whether your life is empty enough that you play or full enough that you don’t, take a look around at the ties that bind you to friends and mentors, Park or otherwise, and celebrate them.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Park is Top Choice
It is admissions season around here, not to be confused with wabbit season. By admissions season, I mean letters of acceptance have gone out and now it is time to convince those students and their families that Park School is their best option.
For what it’s worth, I’m convinced. And here’s why:
Last week, I had the good fortune to substitute teach in an Upper School English class. The class was in the middle of reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We discussed chapters XVII and XVIII, which focus primarily on Southern sensibilities and feudin’. The kids were brilliant and engaged. Where else would you discover connections between Huck Finn and mixed martial arts, the Ravens, and Donald Duck? One of the better definitions I’ve heard for intelligence is the ability to apply material learned in one context to another one, and these kids did that in lightning fashion. Not only that, they did it with ease and humor, and then they were able to back up their positions with textual references. Needless to say, I think we all walked out of the room with a good understanding of the reading and some new things to ponder.
Two weeks ago, aforeblogged Park graduate and author Adam Gidwitz ’00 was on campus. In the morning, he spoke with fourth and fifth graders. The kids asked him all kinds of questions about the life of a writer and the back and forth conversation was candid, heartwarming, and ultimately inspiring. Park will most certainly be producing a good many more celebrated authors in the not too distant future.
In April, we will be holding an alumni event in New York featuring a panel discussion with three of our alumni in the media world, Ruth Franklin ’91 who is on the editorial board of The New Republic, Rahsan Lindsay ’90, Vice President, MTV2, MTVU & Palladia, and Josh Tyrangiel ’90, editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. A dynamic trio to say the least, and they all graduated within one year of each other. That’s not to mention that earlier this month we were in New York for an event at The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted by Malcolm Daniel ’74, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs. Malcolm discussed the Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand exhibit he had assembled. He was both expert and accessible.
I could keep going and going. Park fosters intellectual curiosity, and it galvanizes the passion and perseverance to follow it. For those who have the opportunity to be here, treasure it. “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Mark Twain
For what it’s worth, I’m convinced. And here’s why:
Last week, I had the good fortune to substitute teach in an Upper School English class. The class was in the middle of reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We discussed chapters XVII and XVIII, which focus primarily on Southern sensibilities and feudin’. The kids were brilliant and engaged. Where else would you discover connections between Huck Finn and mixed martial arts, the Ravens, and Donald Duck? One of the better definitions I’ve heard for intelligence is the ability to apply material learned in one context to another one, and these kids did that in lightning fashion. Not only that, they did it with ease and humor, and then they were able to back up their positions with textual references. Needless to say, I think we all walked out of the room with a good understanding of the reading and some new things to ponder.
Two weeks ago, aforeblogged Park graduate and author Adam Gidwitz ’00 was on campus. In the morning, he spoke with fourth and fifth graders. The kids asked him all kinds of questions about the life of a writer and the back and forth conversation was candid, heartwarming, and ultimately inspiring. Park will most certainly be producing a good many more celebrated authors in the not too distant future.
In April, we will be holding an alumni event in New York featuring a panel discussion with three of our alumni in the media world, Ruth Franklin ’91 who is on the editorial board of The New Republic, Rahsan Lindsay ’90, Vice President, MTV2, MTVU & Palladia, and Josh Tyrangiel ’90, editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. A dynamic trio to say the least, and they all graduated within one year of each other. That’s not to mention that earlier this month we were in New York for an event at The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted by Malcolm Daniel ’74, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs. Malcolm discussed the Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand exhibit he had assembled. He was both expert and accessible.
I could keep going and going. Park fosters intellectual curiosity, and it galvanizes the passion and perseverance to follow it. For those who have the opportunity to be here, treasure it. “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Mark Twain
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Access is a Blue Chipper
I remember from my youth a Saturday Night Live skit based on the notion of being able to buy and sell words as stocks. Each year, there are a number of words that rise to the top of everyone’s vocabulary list. In recent years, access has become one of those words. Locally and nationally, and here at Park, access is used to talk about having the opportunity to get a quality education, investing in education, and being able to afford an education.
At the Upper School Martin Luther King Jr. assembly, we were fortunate to have three alumni speak about their roles in education. Greg White ’81, is the President and CEO of the LEARN Charter School Network in Chicago. He is a terrific guy who has dedicated his life to providing access to a high quality learning environment for students, who without these charter opportunities, would be far less likely to be in a good school. The results of his labors thus far are a stellar 99% graduation rate from the LEARN Charter Schools and an impressive college graduate rate from LEARN alumni. To read more about Learn go to www.learncharter.org
Corey Gaber ’03 is in a master’s program at Harvard’s School of Education. His concern about the disparity of a Park education and what is typically offered in Baltimore City public schools was palpable. After finishing this program, it is Corey’s intention to teach in Baltimore City.
Adria Johnson ’05 is teaching at a Baltimore City public school. She conveyed to our kids how much her students shared their same eagerness for education and how they also possessed similar potential as scholars.
All three speakers were so complimentary of each other and had great respect for what the others were doing to expand access to quality education. In the context of the assembly, Greg likened the access to education as the civil rights issue of our time. As this challenge plays out in Baltimore and the rest of the nation, there are also struggles for access at Park.
The good news is that our community continues to support financial assistance in both small and large ways. Fundraising to provide more students with the opportunity to attend Park has become our central purpose, along with supporting faculty salaries. Thankfully, our donors find that providing access to a Park education is a compelling reason to give.
For those of you who did not witness or hear about our live auction in 2009, in just 15 seconds we sold six lots priced at $4,000 to provide a full tuition to a Park student in need of financial assistance. Many people commented afterwards that they wished we had done more. Well, Saturday night at our annual Bull and Oyster Roast we’re hoping to sell 25-$1,000 lots to provide tuition support for varsity athletes in need of financial assistance. We hope that this too will be compelling. If you will not be attending the Bull Roast but would like to buy one lot or more, please just let me know.
So to this bring this thing full circle, go long on access.
At the Upper School Martin Luther King Jr. assembly, we were fortunate to have three alumni speak about their roles in education. Greg White ’81, is the President and CEO of the LEARN Charter School Network in Chicago. He is a terrific guy who has dedicated his life to providing access to a high quality learning environment for students, who without these charter opportunities, would be far less likely to be in a good school. The results of his labors thus far are a stellar 99% graduation rate from the LEARN Charter Schools and an impressive college graduate rate from LEARN alumni. To read more about Learn go to www.learncharter.org
Corey Gaber ’03 is in a master’s program at Harvard’s School of Education. His concern about the disparity of a Park education and what is typically offered in Baltimore City public schools was palpable. After finishing this program, it is Corey’s intention to teach in Baltimore City.
Adria Johnson ’05 is teaching at a Baltimore City public school. She conveyed to our kids how much her students shared their same eagerness for education and how they also possessed similar potential as scholars.
All three speakers were so complimentary of each other and had great respect for what the others were doing to expand access to quality education. In the context of the assembly, Greg likened the access to education as the civil rights issue of our time. As this challenge plays out in Baltimore and the rest of the nation, there are also struggles for access at Park.
The good news is that our community continues to support financial assistance in both small and large ways. Fundraising to provide more students with the opportunity to attend Park has become our central purpose, along with supporting faculty salaries. Thankfully, our donors find that providing access to a Park education is a compelling reason to give.
For those of you who did not witness or hear about our live auction in 2009, in just 15 seconds we sold six lots priced at $4,000 to provide a full tuition to a Park student in need of financial assistance. Many people commented afterwards that they wished we had done more. Well, Saturday night at our annual Bull and Oyster Roast we’re hoping to sell 25-$1,000 lots to provide tuition support for varsity athletes in need of financial assistance. We hope that this too will be compelling. If you will not be attending the Bull Roast but would like to buy one lot or more, please just let me know.
So to this bring this thing full circle, go long on access.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Because
I’ve tried to resist the blog style where there are unrelated tidbits following each other, but this time I cannot fight the urge any longer.
First things first. This is Park’s Week of Giving. We are trying to secure 500 gifts this week—which would be outrageous.
I hope you will take a look at our video— www.parkschool.net/because--where some folks explain why they give to the Annual Fund. Making this video was an extremely gratifying project. The participants were so enthusiastic about their Park experience that it created an epidemic of good feeling. The videographer, Joe Rubino, has worked with Park many times, and his understanding of the school comes through brilliantly in the finished project. Hillary Jacobs, our Director of Communications, was the organizational guru behind-the-scenes, and the results, well, see for yourself.
Bottom line: Please make your gift this week at www.parkschool.net/giveonline. Pledges are welcomed too.
Soccer season ended without a trip to the play-offs this year. Once again, however, Lucky wrung more hard-nosed good soccer out of this group than most thought possible back in August.
A few weeks ago we had an alumni event in New York that featured two of our young writers: Justin Kramon ’98, author of Finny, and Adam Gidwitz ’00, author of A Tale Dark and Grimm. Each spoke engagingly about his work. We welcomed a great crowd of young alumni who came together to see each other and to celebrate the successes of their fellow alumni.
Speaking of young alumni, huge congratulations to Anders Hulleberg ’07. Anders won the Division III National Cross Country Championship and led the Haverford Harriers to the school’s first-ever NCAA championship.
I suppose the one coherent theme of these tidbits is that Park and its alumni are vibrant, thriving, and always striving.
Have a joyful holiday season and a Happy New Year.
First things first. This is Park’s Week of Giving. We are trying to secure 500 gifts this week—which would be outrageous.
I hope you will take a look at our video— www.parkschool.net/because--where some folks explain why they give to the Annual Fund. Making this video was an extremely gratifying project. The participants were so enthusiastic about their Park experience that it created an epidemic of good feeling. The videographer, Joe Rubino, has worked with Park many times, and his understanding of the school comes through brilliantly in the finished project. Hillary Jacobs, our Director of Communications, was the organizational guru behind-the-scenes, and the results, well, see for yourself.
Bottom line: Please make your gift this week at www.parkschool.net/giveonline. Pledges are welcomed too.
Soccer season ended without a trip to the play-offs this year. Once again, however, Lucky wrung more hard-nosed good soccer out of this group than most thought possible back in August.
A few weeks ago we had an alumni event in New York that featured two of our young writers: Justin Kramon ’98, author of Finny, and Adam Gidwitz ’00, author of A Tale Dark and Grimm. Each spoke engagingly about his work. We welcomed a great crowd of young alumni who came together to see each other and to celebrate the successes of their fellow alumni.
Speaking of young alumni, huge congratulations to Anders Hulleberg ’07. Anders won the Division III National Cross Country Championship and led the Haverford Harriers to the school’s first-ever NCAA championship.
I suppose the one coherent theme of these tidbits is that Park and its alumni are vibrant, thriving, and always striving.
Have a joyful holiday season and a Happy New Year.
Monday, October 25, 2010
It's Good to Be Ruthful
On Monday we were most fortunate to have Ruth Halikman Franklin ’91 spend the day here at Park. For those of you unfamiliar with Ruth, she is an accomplished writer and reviewer and currently is on the editorial board at The New Republic. Her new book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, focuses on whether there is a special obligation for Holocaust literature to be truthful.
She was the speaker at the Upper School assembly--- a daunting challenge for many guests. You have to be intellectually engaging while simultaneously keeping the attention of 300 adolescents. Ruth excelled on both scores, and I would say her presentation was one the most impressive I’ve ever seen in this forum.
The topic has some innate emotional triggers often making it difficult to discuss, and I imagine this only heightened Ruth’s challenge in crafting her remarks. I cannot begin to do justice to her thesis, and its support. In all seriousness, I’m hoping if this blog entry gets to her, she’ll share some of her argument with this audience. One of the most impressive features of the presentation was the construction of her argument. You had to pay close attention. Each premise logically rested on the preceding one and together they built a very sound analysis of what we came to understand, is a murky debate.
We all know that we live in a world of sound bites and video postings that typically last 30 seconds. It was so refreshing to bask in a thoughtful and educative presentation. The 30-40 minutes she spoke were a well-orchestrated journey for the listener to be provoked to re-think assumptions, and ultimately to assess the validity of a most cogent thesis.
Does it help that this compelling speaker was a Park graduate? Yes, and how. Ruth deserves all of the credit, but I’m guessing that she had some pretty good mentors along the way, and probably many of them were at the ‘ole Park School.
To see some of Ruth’s work at The New Republic go to:
http://www.tnr.com/search/apachesolr_search/ruth%20franklin
or for more information about her book go to:
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/Jewish/?view=usa&ci=9780195313963
She was the speaker at the Upper School assembly--- a daunting challenge for many guests. You have to be intellectually engaging while simultaneously keeping the attention of 300 adolescents. Ruth excelled on both scores, and I would say her presentation was one the most impressive I’ve ever seen in this forum.
The topic has some innate emotional triggers often making it difficult to discuss, and I imagine this only heightened Ruth’s challenge in crafting her remarks. I cannot begin to do justice to her thesis, and its support. In all seriousness, I’m hoping if this blog entry gets to her, she’ll share some of her argument with this audience. One of the most impressive features of the presentation was the construction of her argument. You had to pay close attention. Each premise logically rested on the preceding one and together they built a very sound analysis of what we came to understand, is a murky debate.
We all know that we live in a world of sound bites and video postings that typically last 30 seconds. It was so refreshing to bask in a thoughtful and educative presentation. The 30-40 minutes she spoke were a well-orchestrated journey for the listener to be provoked to re-think assumptions, and ultimately to assess the validity of a most cogent thesis.
Does it help that this compelling speaker was a Park graduate? Yes, and how. Ruth deserves all of the credit, but I’m guessing that she had some pretty good mentors along the way, and probably many of them were at the ‘ole Park School.
To see some of Ruth’s work at The New Republic go to:
http://www.tnr.com/search/apachesolr_search/ruth%20franklin
or for more information about her book go to:
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/Jewish/?view=usa&ci=9780195313963
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Gift from Purple Shorts
In a very significant way you need to be a part of it to truly appreciate it, but it is so powerful and amazing that I will try my best to convey some of the craft to you. For those of you who have followed Lucky Mallonee’s soccer coaching career, you know the program has enjoyed seasons full of wins and sometimes titles as well as other campaigns that included losing records. There are certain constants, however, that permeate through all of his teams regardless of wins and losses.
My perspective is as a player in the mid-eighties, and primarily as an assistant coach on his staff from the fall of ’94 through the present. For the last nine years, what soccer historians will someday come to call ‘the Ryugo Era’ we’ve been extremely competitive. We’ve enjoyed a few regular season titles, lots of play-off games, and one championship game appearance. In some ways it was harder to see Lucky’s genius with these teams because we enjoyed an abundance of talent. That is not to say that Lucky did not mold it and wring out the best of it, because he did. Let’s just say it took a discerning eye to see it.
The gift I’m alluding to is the uncanny knack to get these kids to see beyond their own self-defined potential and then to reach it. As long as I’ve been a part of his teams, and I experienced this very directly as one of his players, his intuition for an individual’s true strengths and weaknesses is most perceptive. As only a true progressive teacher can, Lucky sets about leading these individuals to maximize their strengths, and then, what’s most incredible, he leads them to identify their weaknesses and master them.
On the soccer field, you can see this process at work with this year’s squad. We do not have an overabundance of soccer talent, but the goal tending from Jake Abrams ’12 has been spectacular, and the outstanding play of striker Andrew Patterson ’11 has been integral to the team’s success thus far. This season Lucky has taken a group of athletes who got humiliated in a scrimmage at the hands of an A-Conference opponent four weeks ago and melded them into a team that is now battling the best of our B-Conference rivals to a virtual standstill.
If you’re still reading this and saying to yourself ‘that’s all well and good’ but at the end of the day who really cares about high school soccer?’ then here’s the point. After living through this experience and receiving the gift of Lucky’s coaching, these kids go out into the ‘real world’ and apply the lessons learned. The results are a steady stream of emails, letters, and calls from high-achieving professionals in all walks of life, including Hollywood executives, college professors, attorneys, financial magnates, and doctors, all saying that they got to where they are in life by applying themselves the way Mr. Mal taught them.
At Park, we have lots of meetings, and we talk about many areas of the Park experience. Sometimes we talk about athletics, and we wrestle with questions like, ‘how can we express to the ‘outside world’ how special Park athletics truly are?’ Oh, and of course, everyone wants that accomplished with a tag line to match our society’s diminished attention span. Well, here’s one about the old man in purple shorts who roams Kelly Field in the fall, “He doesn’t just win games, he changes lives.”
My perspective is as a player in the mid-eighties, and primarily as an assistant coach on his staff from the fall of ’94 through the present. For the last nine years, what soccer historians will someday come to call ‘the Ryugo Era’ we’ve been extremely competitive. We’ve enjoyed a few regular season titles, lots of play-off games, and one championship game appearance. In some ways it was harder to see Lucky’s genius with these teams because we enjoyed an abundance of talent. That is not to say that Lucky did not mold it and wring out the best of it, because he did. Let’s just say it took a discerning eye to see it.
The gift I’m alluding to is the uncanny knack to get these kids to see beyond their own self-defined potential and then to reach it. As long as I’ve been a part of his teams, and I experienced this very directly as one of his players, his intuition for an individual’s true strengths and weaknesses is most perceptive. As only a true progressive teacher can, Lucky sets about leading these individuals to maximize their strengths, and then, what’s most incredible, he leads them to identify their weaknesses and master them.
On the soccer field, you can see this process at work with this year’s squad. We do not have an overabundance of soccer talent, but the goal tending from Jake Abrams ’12 has been spectacular, and the outstanding play of striker Andrew Patterson ’11 has been integral to the team’s success thus far. This season Lucky has taken a group of athletes who got humiliated in a scrimmage at the hands of an A-Conference opponent four weeks ago and melded them into a team that is now battling the best of our B-Conference rivals to a virtual standstill.
If you’re still reading this and saying to yourself ‘that’s all well and good’ but at the end of the day who really cares about high school soccer?’ then here’s the point. After living through this experience and receiving the gift of Lucky’s coaching, these kids go out into the ‘real world’ and apply the lessons learned. The results are a steady stream of emails, letters, and calls from high-achieving professionals in all walks of life, including Hollywood executives, college professors, attorneys, financial magnates, and doctors, all saying that they got to where they are in life by applying themselves the way Mr. Mal taught them.
At Park, we have lots of meetings, and we talk about many areas of the Park experience. Sometimes we talk about athletics, and we wrestle with questions like, ‘how can we express to the ‘outside world’ how special Park athletics truly are?’ Oh, and of course, everyone wants that accomplished with a tag line to match our society’s diminished attention span. Well, here’s one about the old man in purple shorts who roams Kelly Field in the fall, “He doesn’t just win games, he changes lives.”
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