The Spirit of Zuoz Burning Brightly

Every year Zuoz experiences an Indian Summer. The valley will be bathed in golden sunshine, on a cool night snow will settle on the peaks of its mountains, and students of the Lyceum Alpinum will stare undaunted back down the wicket at a bowler.

The first stanza of Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘Vitaï Lampada’ describes a tense final session of a cricket match at a nineteenth century boarding school. The schoolboys playing in the match are sustained by the spirit in which they play the game, even under pressure and in challenging batting conditions. The Latin title of the poem is best translates as ‘The Torch of Life’. This metaphorical torch is the spirit that the school children learn on school playing fields and is carried forth by them throughout life.

The photographs that hang proudly in the «Hall of Fame» are a reminder that this spirit has been carried forth by generation after generation of students at the Lyceum Alpinum for over 100 years. Whilst the content in the text books might have changed, the spirit that burned so brightly in the hearts of the young people in those photographs burns brightly still at our school.

As Games Master I am fortunate to see this in spirit demonstrated through the actions of students regularly, whether it is the leadership of a football captain rousing his team‘There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night -Ten to make and the match to win -A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play and the last man in. And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat, Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote -‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

Stanza 1, ‘Vitaï Lampada’, Sir Henry Newbolt (1872)

mates, the respect of a tennis player accepting an umpire’s tight call, or the commitment of a batsman standing tall to pull a bouncer. Games at the Lyceum Alpinum provides the young people that walk it’s corridors today with a range of sporting activities through which they can find and develop this spirit, the Spirit of Zuoz.

Ben Hartwright Games Master