With The Gregory School’s no-cut athletics program, any student with an interest in playing a sport gets to play, no matter their level of skill or experience. If a lot of students want to play a sport, we just keep making new teams. For example, this season we have three middle school soccer teams. Our no-cut policy encourages all students to try new things, develop or foster a passion for physical fitness, and experience the incomparable benefits of being part of a team.

Because no students are cut from our athletics teams, TGS students are afforded the less tangible, lifelong benefits of athletics, benefits that are only available to the selected students at other schools. These include solid foundations in discipline, time management, self-advocacy, leadership, accountability, coping with setbacks or failure and succeeding with grace and humility, along with the personal, academic, and career relationship connections that can be forged through athletics participation. “Athletics opens doors for future success, and these doors are available to every student at TGS,” Athletics Director Angela Earnhart said.

Just because we have a no-cut program, does not mean we can’t compete. This fall, girls varsity volleyball placed second in the region; a TGS varsity runner won the cross country regional meet; chess went to state; varsity soccer beat the state’s #4 seed; and a TGS swimmer podiumed in two state meet events. Our 2023-24 boys varsity basketball team was regional and state champions. In the last four years, two TGS students have been recruited to D1 college athletics. And these are only our most recent successes.

Students who play sports for The Gregory School are not asked to focus solely on one sport or forgo their passions in other areas. Rather, playing multiple sports and pursuing other interests at TGS is encouraged and rewarded. Upper School students who play a school sport every season for all four years of high school are recognized and honored as “Hawks for All Seasons,” their photos displayed on the wall of El Mirador Gymnasium. “I also love it that you can watch a student play in a soccer game one afternoon and then the next night, you see that same student singing a solo at the choir concert and the day after that the student is building something amazing in the FabLab,” Middle School Soccer Coach Jeff Clashman said. TGS student athletes play in the jazz band, work in the farmyard, serve on the student council, and act in the drama productions.

In the same way that we develop classes based on students’ ideas and interests (for example, the bountiful single-semester science electives or the many students who propose and lead Friday Explorations), our athletics director works hard to hear and fulfill student ideas for new competition opportunities. This year, The Gregory School launched three new competitive sports based on requests from students: our Upper School now has chess and wrestling teams, and Middle School will have baseball in the spring.

In a school of our size, it’s easier to have a permeating ethos, a value system of character and scholarship and belonging, and it’s easier for those school values to be a true part of our athletics program, as they are already ingrained in our athletes and our coaches. Conversely, TGS athletics generates school-value-based community and culture for our school through everything from special events such as Homecoming, Hoop Fest, Thanksgiving morning soccer, and theme nights, to summer workout and open gym programs, to alumni who come back to coach or volunteer to assist after work.