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Winter Stories

Last Friday, Berwick celebrated its third annual winter carnival – where we stop everything, get the PK-12 community outside in the snow, and have some fun. At the opening ceremony, I told the kids that these are moments when we know we are part of something bigger than ourselves at Berwick. Soon all three divisions were off to broomball, acaderod races, and snow sculptures. We watched as faculty and student alike dove in to have a good time together.

I was struck that our opening ceremony took place on the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. For the first time, my children are old enough to be interested in this international competition. They are drawn to the names of the countries and trying to figure out where everyone must train based on geography. They think sports like skeleton and luge are beyond cool. And they don’t understand why their Dad seems to tear up at every other event.

“You cry at everything,” one of them said recently.

Well, as a Head of School in February, that may in fact be true. But there is something about the emotion of the Olympics that gets us in a different way than the Super Bowl or the World Series. For me, my sense of patriotism is a part of that, but it is even more so about the tenor of the stories. There is something amazing to me about certain events that require four years of training and then one gets a few runs to deliver. There is little room to have an off day, and no one is particularly interested in the factors or issues that led to your results. We only know that when the athletes lose, we cry a little harder, and when they win – we cry a little harder as well.

Seemingly each one of these athletes has a family that has sacrificed so much to put him/her in the position to compete. The pressure of that is palpable to me – even while I sit in front of the fire and watch it unfold from thousands of miles away.  I am reminded that each Berwick student has his or her own version of these stories: families who sacrifice so much through tuition dollars, transportation, homework support, and assisting with social connections. All of our parents are so invested in seeing their children achieve their own dreams. I think this is why when I look out into the crowd at Commencement each spring it feels a bit like my house watching the Olympics: not a dry eye in the place.

Whether it is a community building carnival, an Olympic dream, or a Berwick graduation – young people have teams of support behind them. Thank you for your part in these winter stories.

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