PC Expands Squash Program
CELEBRATING GIRLS SPORTS A team of alumnae kicked off a celebration of 20 years of Penn Charter girls athletics last spring by establishing the Women’s Legacy Scholarship Fund and dedicating the fund to four female teachers and coaches. At a luncheon last spring, honorees Debbie White, Cheryl Irving, Beth Glascott and Elizabeth Flemming (shown here) were celebrated for together dedicating more than 100 years to educating Penn Charter girls both in and out of the classroom. The fund will support financial aid awards to “female student-athletes who demonstrate the qualities of leadership, persistence and dedication that are so important to these four women.” Penn Charter Girls Sports held a field hockey clinic in the fall and plans additional mini-events throughout the year, leading up to a Celebration of Girls Varsity Sports on June 3, at 6 p.m., at the Chestnut Club in Philadelphia.
Damon Leedale-Brown, recently head coach and national program director for the Dutch squash team as well as head coach for men’s and women’s squash at Haverford College, joined the PC athletics staff this fall in a new position as director of squash. Leedale-Brown will coach the girls varsity girls team and expand the program at Penn Charter’s new Kline & Specter Squash Center. For 16 years, Leedale-Brown has worked at an elite level with squash players and coaches. He is a Level IV professional coach with the England Squash Rackets Association. He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association and has researched the physiological, movement and technical demands of the sport. “Damon is an outstanding teacher-coach who has worked with squash players from beginner to elite levels,” said PC’s Director of Athletics Paul Butler. “He will help to bring continued excellence to our school and athletic program.”
Helping to Make It
BETTER
Food on Fridays is just one of the projects that grew from last year’s school-wide theme of community. The first grade invited the entire community to bring in a can, jar or box of food and put it on any of the shelving units that can be found in the three divisions. Each Friday, Upper School students help first graders collect the food, which is then distributed to different agencies. Other examples of communityinspired projects:
• Third grade knitted and delivered
blankets to Face to Face, the social service arm of St. Vincent’s Church in Germantown. The children held a bake
sale to raise money for needles and yarn, parents taught the students how to knit the 175 squares, and a PC grandmother knitted them together.
• The bird community that shares Penn
Charter’s campus benefited from a woodshop collaboration between second and seventh grade (see photo). With the help of a PC grandparent, students built birdhouses and feeders, nestling them in trees and near windows. “I remember when I learned how to do this,” recalled seventh grader Grace Harbison, “and I was just like them – I would get it crooked. Now I can come back and help them make it better.”
• Upper School students held a bake sale
to benefit earthquake victims in Haiti, second graders acted as city planners and built a beautiful community that they displayed in the Lower School lobby, and third and 10th grade students borrowed a PC mom’s secret apple pie recipe to bake dozens of pies for Thanksgiving baskets distributed by the Germantown Crisis Relief Ministry.