Richard Dobrenov | Deputy Principal and Head of Senior School

“The Pursuit of Excellence is the Only Game a School Should be Willing to Play” – E.M. Swift

At a recent conference I attended, one of the main topics of conversation centred on the theme of teacher – student relationships and the notion of thinking and interacting beyond the square of the classroom.  In other words; the relationships a teacher develops outside the classroom have a dramatic impact on his/her relationships inside the classroom.  The recent COVID-19 restrictions have definitely highlighted the enormous impact teachers have both in and beyond the classroom.  From my own experience as a prac teacher and throughout my teaching career, the opportunity to interact with students outside the formal classroom context is critical in fostering the pursuit of excellence.

In a paper entitled “Sports in a School Curriculum: Four Postulates to Play By,” E.M. Swift recounts his days as a boarder at The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, U.S.A. and how the pursuit of excellence in both academics and sport plays a pivotal role in the development of our future leaders.  Swift graduated from College and went on to be one of Sports Illustrated’s leading journalists for over thirty years.  Throughout his paper, Swift explores the importance of the role of competitive sport in a school’s curriculum.  The idea that “sports are important, less for what they teach you rather than for what they allow you to discover for yourself,” certainly rings true with both school and club sport.

Too often the successes of Inter-School sport are blown way out of proportion and revisited time and time again in later years.  The negative moments of missing selection also stay with the competitors and the dark side of sport can be a young person’s first exposure to rejection.  This will not be the last time that they are exposed to rejection and Swift again points out that, “one can grow through failure just as easily as one can become stunted by success.”  The athlete who is physically dominant at a young age and relies solely on that aspect rather than continuing to develop and hone necessary skills, becomes ordinary by the age of fifteen. Competitive sport does more than teach character, it actually reveals character.  Those athletes who are full of bravado on one side of the sideline are often shown to be wanting once the blowtorch of competition is placed upon them.  Similarly; the quiet, shy types have a chance to come into their own and the student who struggles with fractions can show that his mathematic ability is merely a small part of who he really is.

Swift identified four basic tenets of competitive sport.  The first is that the rules are unassailable – there is a winner and a loser.  A batsman is safe or he is out, and a foul shot is made or it is missed.  There is very little grey involved in competitive sport and this is why teenagers in particular, cherish it.  There is no compromise or extenuating circumstances and accountability is premium.  Players who are tempted to break the rules must learn to weigh the risk of reward on a split-second basis.  In doing so the player also discovers that their mistakes have an impact on team members just as other team member mistakes impact on him/her.  The ideal of accountability is paramount in team sports just as in marriage or employment.  When a player argues with a referee they are saying that it is the referee who is at fault, rather than the player who has infringed.

Swift’s second tenant is that the purpose of the game is to win.  If the purpose is not to win then the game becomes an activity.  When playing a game with rules and where the score is kept, students should try their best to win.  As NFL coach and mentor Vince Lombardi once said, “That does not mean that you cheat to win, behave obnoxiously, or go into a deep funk if you lose.”   Attempting to win means that you respect your opponent and the sport that you are playing so much that you try your hardest through your own game plan to exploit your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses; all whilst playing within the parameters of the rules.

Thirdly, competitive sport provides us with some of our earliest lessons in learning to work with people we may not necessarily like.  In sharing a common goal, that is winning, actions on a sporting field replace words.  Your family background, race or religion has no impact on your ability to play the game and most importantly contribute to the team.  Players become mutually dependent on each other whether they like it or not.  This shared responsibility of teamwork cannot be taught in a classroom.  The nature of sport means that one person’s success is another’s failure – and sometimes you fail.  The feeling of letting your teammates down by dropping a catch or missing a tackle must be followed by the question of “What more could I have done?”  Unfortunately students at schools who are disengaged from the wide range of team based activities often become disenfranchised from the school’s ethos and fail to develop a sense of shared responsibility, a desire to not let the team down.  According to Swift, these are the students who rarely fulfil their true potential.

Finally Swift explores the relationship between coaches and their teams; in particular High School coaches.  According to Swift, the fundamental difference that exists between High School and College coaches is that “at the secondary level, most coaches are really educators who happen to spend their afternoons coaching.”  These men and women are not professional coaches (this is not their primary source of earning a living) and as such their self-esteem does not rise and fall with the win-loss ratio of the team.  The ideal coach takes his/her role seriously and coaches to win but the notion of student athlete is always kept in perspective.  “Everything has its own time and place, because all of it matters.”   The relationship of mutual respect and trust forged outside the classroom has enormous impact inside the classroom and as such improves learning outcomes.

At any level, sport is about the pursuit of excellence in a medium which is essentially trivial.  The attitude forged by pursuing excellence is what matters not the win/loss ratio or batting and bowling averages.  The journey is far more important than the final destination and as such the pursuit of excellence can be driven both inside and outside the classroom.  As Swift concludes, “once a young man or woman starts trying to be the best he or she can possibly be, it’s difficult to stop.”