Athletics

Feature: Athletics

North Gym Opens

By Rich Alifano, Director of Athletics and Physical Education

On January 27, we opened the North Gym to the cheers and smiles of our boys. Entering the massive gym with wide eyes and an endless source of energy, the boys began the journey through our exciting physical education curriculum. As you can imagine, it wasn’t only the boys who were full of excitement and energy; the PE teachers were as well.

For both groups, the new gym meant there would be the ability to teach a greater variety of skills, activities, and games. Also, we could now bring together groups of students who previously, due to the pandemic, had to remain separated. The sheer size of the gym had an immediate positive impact on the way we could safely teach physical education classes.

We have opened up our kindergarten curriculum to movement games that allow the boys to explore the entire gym while using a variety of balls, hula hoops, scarves, floor spots, pinnies, and so much more. They are diving deep into collaboration, communication, movement directions and levels, hand-eye, foot-eye, and so much more.

Currently, the firstthrough sixth-grade boys are discovering all of the skill levels and game strategies that go along with basketball. If you entered the gym during a first-grade class you would see each boy with his own basketball, appropriately sized for their age and skill, with the baskets lowered to eight feet. All of the six backboards can be adjusted to any height between eight and ten feet. This feature allows us to teach the proper mechanics of shooting at a very early age.

Entering the gym during a fifth- through eighth-grade class, you might also see each boy with his own ball; however, these boys would be working on their power, control, and speed dribbles. They would be competing in shooting games, dribbling and This gym also allows us to have full-sided indoor soccer and lacrosse games with regulation indoor goals. The ability to now have practice, regardless of the weather and outdoor field availability on Randall’s Island, immediately allows our teams to advance their skills and game preparation. In fact, all of our teams will benefit from our gym’s size and its availability to our athletes.

Speaking of our athletes, I was fortunate enough to speak with several of our alumni who have played or are playing collegiate athletics. Nick Silber ’13 just finished a pitching career at Rice University, Adam Donaldson ’05 is currently Assistant Athletics Director for production and media partnerships at the University of Notre Dame and played tennis at the University of Louisville, and Will Milne ’01 was a standout football lineman for the University of Pennsylvania.

Mary Leonard, Math Teacher, chatted with current University of Michigan track member Derrick Simmons ’15, while other athletes spoke with our Alumni Department and are featured on the following pages. They include: Larry Greer ’81, the Assistant Basketball Coach for the New York Knicks, who played basketball at Northeastern University; Chris Brooks ’98, who played hockey at Yale University, as well as professionally for four years; Alex Shuman ’97, a coach for the football and ice hockey teams at The Taft School and who played football himself at St. Lawrence University; Hasani Figueroa ’10, who played football at Amherst; William Morris ’15, a lacrosse midfielder at St. John’s University; and Dylan Porges ’16, a swimmer for Princeton University, who has qualified for the US Olympic Trials this summer.

All of these athletes have fond memories of A-S Athletics and attribute the foundation for their success to the A-S program and coaching they received. We hope to have them all back in the near future to celebrate our new athletics facility and the proud tradition of A-S sports.

Agility training for US boys