100 Years of Educational Excellence: Focus on Athletics
On Saturday, October 20, Principia College inducted six individual athletes and one team into the Gold & Blue Athletic Hall of Fame. Each of the honorees’ remarkable achievements is worthy of praise on its own merit, and they are all notable for their context—a context handed down over generations expressed in these words: “The object of the game is to win. The purpose of the game is to grow spiritually.”
This order of precedence—that spiritual growth is paramount and everything else follows from it—pervades all of Principia’s educational programs, not just athletics. “The subject matter of the classroom is only the vehicle for the larger purpose,” explained Principia’s founder, Mary Kimball Morgan. “The vital thing is not merely intellectual progress, but spiritual progress” (Education at The Principia, p. 107).
This was true about athletics at Principia even before Principia had what could be called an athletic program. Our first athletic “field” (a littered, vacant lot behind the rental property that housed the school) had just been cleared and basketball standards raised when students organized The Principia Athletic Association. With Principia’s first interscholastic competition still more than a year in the future (Principia girls versus Central High in the relatively new sport of basketball), the students took it upon themselves to see that the school—and by extension, the athletes—had colors (gold and blue), a motto (As the sowing, the reaping), and a seal (the sheaf and sickle, designed by Frederick Oakes Sylvester). Just a few years later, in 1905, two of Principia’s first graduating seniors wrote “The Gold and Blue”—the fight song we still sing today.
Principia’s educational tradition is that ideas—such as “Gold stands for purity, blue for courage true”—come first, and achievement unfolds as we work to put those ideas into practice more effectively. This is a point of differentiation for Principia and its athletes, and the springboard for the individual and team achievements that make up our 100+ year athletic history and distinguish not only those inducted into the Hall of Fame but every Principia athlete—past, present, and future.
It’s not surprising, then, that Principia athletes refer often to personal, spiritual growth when they talk about their Principia athletic experience. As Stephanie (Hood, US’99, C’03) Case, one of this year’s Hall of Fame inductees put it, “The environment at Principia College . . . fosters growth—both spiritual and athletic—and gives athletes a unique opportunity to reach levels of performance they would not be able to achieve anywhere else.”
It’s also not surprising that Principia’s athletic history is crowded with achievements perhaps unexpected from such a small institution. Principia alums have competed at national and international levels, including at the Olympics, and some have set world records. Dean Brownell (JC’22), for example, held the world record for men’s indoor pole-vaulting from 1924 to 1926, and Robert Baker (C’78) still holds the world record for the decathlon 1,500-meter run.
Among those not yet inducted into the Hall of Fame are numerous league, district, and state champions, state-, national-, and world-record holders, All-American athletes, and athletes who’ve gone on to professional competition.
Go, Prin!