Skip to main content

Why not us?

This past Wednesday, our Girls Varsity Hockey team hosted its first ever NEPSAC playoff game at home and beat a talented Proctor team 3-1. I was overwhelmed by the intensity and pace of play. Our student body turned out in droves, and the energy was outstanding in the Dover Ice Arena. Within the first two minutes of the game, our girls let in the first goal. We seemed a bit slow coming out of the gates, and I worried if the momentum would quickly unwind for the Bulldogs.

Just the opposite occurred. Immediately, our team was flying around the ice with a renewed sense of focus and urgency. We answered with two remarkable goals just before the first period ended. I was watching as resiliency and grit, the favorite topics of academic researchers these days, were unfolding before our eyes. Now we move on to Boston on Saturday to face the number one seed in the tournament.

It is amazing how a community can hop on the shoulders of a successful team and create benefits far beyond their wins and losses. It is certainly emotional, and almost spiritual in some ways. I remember back in July of 2007, when the girls’ assistant coach approached me during my first summer to tell me that we only had eight female skaters, and he questioned whether we could have a program in the future. Similarly, our swim team was hanging by a thread. Having had a championship season of their own, our swimmers are headed to take on their own New England tournament on Saturday.

Photo courtesy of Joanne Hernon


Sometimes I relish when little Berwick Academy, a day school tucked away in Southern Maine, can surprise other teams with the quality of our play and the fortitude of our character. While celebrating with our girls and their parents at the rink yesterday, I was asked what I thought about their performance. I was actually a bit choked up about the whole thing. When I was then asked about our chance to actually win the entire New England tournament, I responded rather quickly: Why not us? Whatever happens from here, it has been a remarkable season for these girls, and we should all be incredibly proud of what they have accomplished.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Piercing the Bubble

This week we were so fortunate to have former NH Senator Kelly Ayotte address grades 7 – 11 in our theater about Civil Discourse in a time of Political Polarization. Senator Ayotte spoke to the need to take the high road in tough conversations and put an incredible primacy on building relationships with people who hold different opinions. She was able to speak to some of her own successes in working across the aisle to develop legislation to address the opioid crisis in New Hampshire as one powerful example of how this can be possible. Additionally, Senator Ayotte offered a strong reminder to our students of the need for more women in positions of leadership within our government, citing that she had only been the 53rd woman to serve in the US senate during her tenure. With a down-to-earth style and but an appropriately impassioned call to action, she challenged our students to become the leaders that they could be. Her call to action and example of service were powerful reminder...
Post a Comment
Read more

Arts Underground

One of Berwick’s great strengths is its arts culture, and I have always felt that there is both a public and private face of this culture. The public face includes our amazing concerts, our ambitious productions, and the various art shows we produce throughout the year. The private face tends to include things like private lessons, coffeehouses, assembly performances, murals painted on walls, and unexpected artistic expressions that emerge on campus throughout the year. One of the great traditions I will miss at Berwick will be the annual recital week in April. So many of our students hone their craft on private music lessons throughout the year in the hopes of having a public performance at this time. Simultaneously, we have a week of performances in the theater and in Chip Harding’s coffeehouse lair – the space he likes to refer to as his “smoldering ruins,” referring to the carnage left there after every Middle School electric guitar class. This year, for my second and final time, I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Behind the scenes

I often like to use the word authenticity when talking about Berwick Academy. I have said that I feel more able to be myself at Berwick than any place I have worked to date; it truly is a gift to feel that way. For parents, we usually focus on the teachers and coaches who make our kids’ lives so dynamic, and we forget the people behind the scenes who make the Berwick experience possible: maintenance, custodial, food, transportation, and support staff, etc. Berwick could not deliver the program it delivers without such high quality yet largely unheralded work. The same could be said of the Head of School. I am quick to point out that being a father is far more humbling than being a Head of School. There is no way on earth that I could have possibly moved this school forward without the unquestioned support of my wife, Amy. I often marvel that, in addition to dealing with a husband who can be tired and grumpy at the end of long days, she somehow has managed to catalyze the amazing...
1 comment
Read more