A couple of weeks ago, on campus, we celebrated our sports teams at our outdoor Spirit Assembly. It was a beautiful autumn day; warmer than normal. Almost everyone wore yellow and green. In their hair. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of hair dyed colors that do not appear in nature. But it all looked very nice with the face paint and fake tattoos. And I thought, this is radical. Of course, what makes Sandy Spring really different is not green hair. What does make us the incredible school that we are? Well, our team mascot is a really lovable Wildebeest; that’s got to be different. Maybe we should give our Wildebeest a name. I propose naming him George Fox (this is a Quaker joke). That would take us from different to, well, really different.
Sandy Spring Friends School really stands out not only because of the way that we celebrate sports but because of the way that we play sports. We have great coaches, and great coaches encourage teammates to be leaders and leaders to be teammates. Everyone plays. And we play to win. Our gym is full of championship banners. But mostly our student athletes learn on the field (or court or trail) about sportsmanship and about balance. By balance, I don’t mean putting sports into “perspective”. Who wants to put sports into perspective? Of course, it doesn’t make a bit of difference in 50 years who won the volleyball game - or the Super Bowl for that matter. We’re not playing a soccer game because of how it will make us feel in 2060. We’re playing the game because we want to come together as a team: to connect, to support each other, to make awesome plays, and to leave every ounce of energy we have on the field. We play to win. But we won’t do anything to put our individual or collective integrity at risk. Because even cooler than winning is to stand tall, to earn respect, to understand what is really worth not only winning but keeping. Our students will remember playing sports the Sandy Spring way in 2060. Just ask the referees or the parents of the opposing team who write Steve Powers letters telling him how different we are and how much they admire us for it. I guess we are radical.