Proctor Academy's Ocean Classroom program is more than 10% of the way through their nine-week voyage along the eastern seaboard. Each day, a student or deck hand shares a reflection from the day in the Ship's Log. Enjoy the first nine entries below along with some photos from the journey to date.
Watching the teams on campus this fall, talking to coaches, hearing the bell ring on Maxwell Savage after victories are all reminders of all the contests that are happening most days during the week. It’s not just Wednesdays and Saturdays anymore. Mondays and Fridays are roped into schedules, and buses are always pulling into and leaving campus. Uniforms are handed out, cleats are knocked clean before entering buildings, the training room ice bags are everywhere.
Some of us are in our first year teaching, others in our 40th. Our experiences vary, our skill sets as diverse as our passions. And yet a common thread runs throughout our purpose in this community: we are passionate about connecting with and changing the trajectory of young people’s lives.
The Proctor Boys’ Soccer team knew they would have to reload with talent after losing eleven seniors off of last year’s team, five of whom have gone on to play at the collegiate level. In addition to developing the in-game tactics and skills needed to compete in the highly competitive Lakes Region, Head Coach Ian Hamlet and Assistant Coach Peter Southworth know team chemistry lies at the core of this group's success. The team's goals remain the same for the 2019 campaign, win or lose: they want to play to the best of their ability and to focus one game at a time.
As week one in Segovia comes to a close there is so much to look back on already. It still feels like we just got off the plane from Boston, not sure as to what time it was or even where we all were. The first few hours after our arrival seemed like a blur. The group had been up for almost 16 hours straight and then immediately thrown into a new culture.
Going to sea is not easy. It never has been. Read diaries of anyone who has spent considerable time at sea and you will quickly learn to appreciate the grit, determination, and trust required to live and work alongside a small group of fellow sailors. The twenty-one Proctor students aboard Ocean Classroom will soon experience first hand the bonds forged at sea.
Climate change. It’s hard to miss these days. Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who sailed to New York to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit has been in front of Congress and has been interviewed countless times (see Trevor Noah interview below). Reports of Imelda’s drenching rains in Texas (over 40 inches in some places) have suggested that it has been additionally water stoked by a warmer atmosphere and we may see more of these tropical depressions. Dorian’s cataclysmic stalling over the Bahamas as a Category 5 hurricane is still fresh in many minds.
Over the past twenty years, the Northern New England Mountain Biking League has grown into the most comprehensive high school mountain biking league in the East with riders from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts represented in each week’s race. Proctor hosted for the first race of the season at the Proctor Ski Area on Wednesday, September 18 as more than 300 riders from over 23 schools in four states hit the trails.
