Groton Inducts New Members to Athletic Hall of Fame Groton School inducted five standout athletes and a remarkable team into the School’s Athletic Hall of Fame on May 11, during Reunion Weekend. The inductees’ stories take us to the Olympics, a lacrosse World Cup in Japan, the National Platform Tennis Hall of Fame, and the Baseball Hall of Fame. The second annual induction ceremony filled the Athletic Center lobby, as friends gathered to celebrate the achievements of Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar ’98, Peter Gammons ’63, Gordon Gray ’61, Stephen Maturo ’93, Gillian Thomson ’88, and the 1983 girls ice hockey team.
Olympian Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar ’98 sailed with the U.S. Sailing Team for 12 years, placing fifth at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and winning the 2008 Women’s 470 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. To date, Isabelle and her crewmate Erin Maxwell are the only American 470 Team since 1991 to win a World Championship. Isabelle started at Groton in Fourth Form, yet managed to accumulate eight varsity letters in soccer, ice hockey, and crew. She cocaptained the ice hockey team and rowed for Groton’s first boat, which won 44
Peter Gammons ’63, Joe Sitterson ’63, Holly Hegener ’83, Rob Parke ’63, Sarah Barnes Jensen ’83, Gillian Thomson ’88, Steve Maturo ’93, and Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar ’98
the NEIRA Championships. After Groton, Isabelle earned two varsity letters at Yale in ice hockey, before concentrating solely on sailing, captaining the Yale Varsity Sailing Team in 2000. The first sports article Peter Gammons ’63 wrote, for Groton’s Third Form Weekly, hangs on his office wall. That led to articles in, yes, the Circle Voice, then the Daily Tar Heel, the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, and more recently, to commentary for ESPN and the Major League Baseball Network. Peter was voted the National Sportswriter
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of the Year by the National Association of Writers and Broadcasters three times and in 2010 was voted into its Hall of Fame. In 2005 he received the C.C. Johnson Spink Award and was honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Peter made such an impact covering the Red Sox for the Boston Globe that January 9, 2009 was proclaimed Peter Gammons Day in the City of Boston by the president of the Boston City Council; in addition, Theo Epstein, former Red Sox general manager, announced a college scholarship in
Gammons’ name. Peter proudly includes Jake Congleton’s final game as Groton School’s head football coach in 1994 among the 10 most important sporting events he has covered. On the Saturday of Reunion Weekend, crowds gathered to watch Peter throw out the first pitch for the varsity baseball team, creating momentum that no doubt helped lead to a 5-1 win. Gordon Gray ’51 was
honored posthumously and remembered not only for his achievement in football, baseball, tennis, and platform tennis, but