For many years, Mac Gratwick was an excellent teacher at Barstow.  On Wednesday, August 27th he became known as an excellent speaker as he took the stage at the innaugural Varsity Night.  Mr. Gratwick spoke fondly of his memories as a Barstow faculty member and coach.  The following is his speech in its entirety.

VARSITY NIGHT SPEECH

August 27, 2008

                   

By Mitchell Gratwick II

 

Good evening and thank you for giving me the honor of speaking tonight. I know you are all dying to get home to hear Bill Clinton speak at the Democratic National Convention, so I promise to be brief!

 

   Many years ago, I first began teaching at a country day school much like Barstow. All students through 8th grade had PE each day. The campus was

only a little smaller than ours but there were several buildings a distance apart so it took some time for teachers to shepherd students to the gym and

they sometimes complained about the class time lost to P.E. The Athletic Director’s response was, “If we can spend 8 hours a day educating their minds, isn’t it right that we spend at least one hour educating their bodies?”

 

 

   Nearly 100 years ago in 1909, Mary Louise Barstow articulated the mission for her school along similar lines: “.. .to promote sound scholarship and to give symmetrical development to mind, body and character.”  I have always bought into those 2 philosophies as they seem to embody the ideal of the “scholar-athlete” that I feel is so vital to students’ overall development.  One especially important part of that ideal is that the term is not “athlete- scholar“. The order of the words helps us keep the place of athletics in the curriculum in perspective.  We want to develop young men and women who are 

as comfortable in the art room, the music room or the classroom as they are in the gym.  And let’s also remember that the scholar athletes

we are striving for are not just the top students and athletes, but also the average young person who just wants a chance to compete.

 

      The third part of that mind, body, character triangle - character, also includes sportsmanship.  Sportsmanship is as important as athletic prowess

because without it, athletics can easily grow out of proportion to the other two legs of the triangle. Good sportsmanship means taking loss or defeat without complaint, or victory without gloating and treating one’s opponents with fairness, generosity and courtesy.

 

   Thirty seven years ago in the fall of 1971 when I first arrived at Barstow, our athletic program was really in its infancy - especially the boys part that year (’71-’72), we fielded 11 teams with 140 students, and that spread the talent pretty thin!   Last year, our enrollment in the Upper School had grown 27% to 193, but we fielded 25 teams - a 56% growth! We were able to accomplish that feat because 75% of our students participate in one or more sports! But by offering so many options, our teams often lack a strong bench and we sometimes lose games, tournaments and championships due to our lack of depth. And when you don’t win consistently, it puts a lot of pressure on everyone and makes it more difficult to keep our scholar/athlete perspective. 

 

   To illustrate, in 1979, the Shawnee Mission high schools fielded fall soccer teams for the first time. As varsity coach then, I agreed to home and home games with all 5 schools to help our program grow. I knew we would be out of our depth with some of them, but I thought we could compete for a couple of years with the others as their programs were not as well developed yet. Besides, we had a strong team that year with 2 excellent goalkeepers who could play other positions as well, and we were strong at midfield. As fate would have it, however, one keeper John - broke his thumb the first week of preseason practice. However, we still headed into our first game of the season against SM East with our other talented keeper Brian. That September Friday, Brian had a spectacular game, everyone else played well and we defeated East by a score of 2 to 0!

 

 

   When I arrived at school the following Monday, several of the players rushed to tell me that Brian had had an emergency appendectomy that weekend! Out for the season! So I drafted a sophomore with some Middle School goalie experience. More injuries followed, our new keeper made predictable mistakes and we were on our way to a 1 and 16 season! As any serious Royals fan knows, that kind of a losing streak tests everyone - players coaches and parents. With a dismal season about over, I received the following letter from the President of the BPA:

 

                                    October 26, 1979

Dear Mitchell,

 

   We all feel that you are a great guy and that we have a great soccer team. This has not been your best year for soccer and I know you must be feeling a little down. I just wanted to tell you the feedback I get as President of the Parents Association. The parents want 2 things - 1. That their children have the opportunity to participate and 2. To know that you care about their children. It is nice to win but that is not the important thing - it is playing the game.

   My best to you and my appreciation for all that you have done for Barstow.

                With warm regards,

                 Kit Smith

 

   That letter makes such a strong statement about the perspective that we all need to maintain - especially in a school like Barstow where our goal is the well rounded person. Parents and players in 1979 kept faith in us. They took the losses without much complaint and waited for things to improve.

 

 

   And improve they did! The next year, we rebounded to a 9 and 12 record, which was pretty good since 3 of those losses came against excellent St. Louis teams. We defeated Pembroke in their own tournament to win our first soccer trophy, and only lost in districts in overtime to a tough Rockhurst team. We won 9 games that fall of 1980 against good teams - in large part because of the character those young men showed. So whatever our records turn out to be, those “gut checks” can be useful because they force us to go back and reexamine why we compete. We are scholar/athletes with a mission to develop “mind body and character.”  Often, players will come away from the difficult times having learned important lessons.  One such player, Mr. Greg Emas, an alumnus of that 1980 team, recently wrote me this story:

 

I remember the trip to St. Louis to play the Parkway schools. We played on Astroturf, and that was a first. The field was not only fast, but tapered so the ball got away from you. One thing does specifically stick in my mind. We were tied, or down by one, and the game was almost over. On a corner kick the ball passed right in front of me for an open header into the goal. I was caught off guard, and completely missed it. I never had such a good opportunity to score a goal on a corner kick, and I was not mentally prepared for it. It was a good lesson though: To think about what may happen, and know how you will react to it. In golf terms, its expecting your opponent to make his putt which will force you to make yours. That way you are already mentally prepared to make your putt. I remember during the last few minutes of that Parkway game wishing for another opportunity like that corner kick. It never happened, but I learned a good lesson from that experience, not only for sports, but for work and life in general.<br><br>

 

   I think that story illustrates still another dimension to Miss Barstow’s triangle - the life lessons that we can learn from athletic competition if we are paying attention like Greg Emas was. 

  

   And sometimes, as hard as everyone works, as much talent and good coaching as you assemble, you just catch a break! In the final game of the Pembroke tournament that year, we were ahead by 2 goals early in the second half. But our starting 11 were getting pretty tired as we had only 4 subs on our bench and they were not as talented as our starters. Pembroke, on the other hand, had a number of strong players to rest their starters. Just as it seemed our defense was ready to collapse, a dog suddenly ran on to the field! It seems he wanted to join the fun! Of course, the game stopped and many players began to chase the dog to try to corral it.  But I waved at our players to sit down and rest! Let it’s owner chase it. After 5 or 10 minutes, the dog

was nabbed and play resumed. But it was too late. The momentum was lost, we got a rest and were able to hold on for a victory. Our boys were ecstatic but there wasn’t any gloating. It was too hard fought a win for that. Our boys showed an awful lot of character and heart!

 

 

   I think last year’s baseball team is an excellent example of the sort of individuals and attitudes that represent the best of Barstow and maybe shows how far our programs have come since the 1970’s. They were well rounded young men of character and there were enough talented players to even give us a deep bench.  Or look at last year’s tennis team with State champions, Stephanie Dudzinski and Morgan Rainey as further excellent examples of Barstow scholar athletes. And there were other examples of individual and team achievements as well.

 

 

   So this year, I wish all our teams the success and character that last year’s baseball team and others showed!  May your players remain healthy, may your bench be deep, your grades good, - and may an occasional, playful dog run onto the field at just the right moment!