School Spotlight: St. Thomas More School (CT

St. Thomas More School is a college preparatory boarding school in Oakdale, Connecticut. Oakdale is a small town in Connecticut, about a 30 minute drive from the capital, Hartford. The St. Thomas More Chancellors are led by head coach Ernest Anderson. Coach Anderson actually attended St. Thomas More as a post-graduate in 2004. He went on to play at Nichols college in Dudley, Massachusetts. After graduating from Nichols, coach Anderson began his coaching career at Hamden Hall. At the time, coach Anderson was working for Ron Carbone, a legendary high school football coach in the state of Connecticut. Following his time at Hamden Hall, coach Anderson would coach at a few high schools around the Connecticut area before ending up back at his alma mater. After working as the team’s defensive coordinator for some time, last spring coach Anderson became the head coach at St. Thomas More. Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with coach Anderson as we talked about his team and the remainder of their season.

One of the first questions I asked coach Anderson was, what he’s excited about with this new group of young talent. He answered, “I’m always excited about how our book is going to be told. We’re different than other high schools. When you go to high school, you kind of grew up with the kids and played against that competition your whole life. At St. Thomas More and other college preparatory boarding schools it’s different. Everybody was recruited here, everybody was the guy at their old school. So, the challenge for us is to make this a talented team, and not a talented group of individuals”.

With being a college preparatory boarding school, many players are post-graduate seniors trying to get a scholarship or better offers. So, I asked the coach about the recruitment process and if there are any words or messages he tells the team to establish better rela tionships and help build trust with one another. Coach Anderson replied with, “I think if you asked all of our guys, the biggest thing we preach is selflessness, hard work, and caring for each other. We recruit certain types of kids. High academic, selfless kid, like I said who knows their why. If you talk to my guys, they’ll always know their why. It’s very important that they know why they’re here, who they’re here for and we focus on that throughout the year, so they never lose focus. When we come for camp, that’s the first thing that we write. We write a list of our why’s and tape it to our door. So that everyday we leave our dorm room, we’ll understand why we are here and why we are doing what we’re doing.