Have you ever considered adding any new Priory sports in recent years?
Yes, We have thought of that. We get a fair amount of questions throughout the year from people saying, “Hey, I’m interested in this or that.” And we always look at that on an individual basis. There have probably been two or three since last summer and it depends on the circumstance. There’s a lot that goes into creating a new sport. I think we’re happy with where we’re happy now in terms of the number of sports, but we’re always looking into it. We don’t want to take opportunities from kids, and if the numbers are there we consider it. Anything that doesn’t require a pool or going off campus. Off campus is harder and we consider that a last resort.
Are there plans to add another sport in the spring?
We have a fair amount of rentals in our gyms in the evenings that makes things trickier. We could adjust if we had to, but it’s never say never. If the numbers are there, we consider it, but it’s also about sustainability. If we have 15 seniors ask this year, we have to consider five years from now. Plus we have to hire coaches, get on with the states, and regulations.
What problems, if any, are currently most pressing in regards to Priory athletics? For instance, is there a risk of losing a sport or significantly changing how they operate?
I don’t think there’s any risk. We have 12 sports right now, and I think that’s a really good number for us. We had 13 not long ago with rugby, and I think we stopped that around COVID. I would say things are somewhat cyclical, we might have 30 kids come out for freshman baseball one year and 6 the next year. So there’s blessings and curses for being a smaller school. There are even challenges when you have too many people come out and you have to cut some kids.
What is the current plan in regards to football next year? Do you see a problem with the number of students enrolled in certain sports, and do you have a plan to add more kids?
Generally football is a numbers game wherever you go, whether it’s here or the biggest school in the state. It’s numbers with offense, defense, special teams. And there’s injuries so that’s that. There’s a lot going on. In looking at all the kids who are signed up for sports and the transfers who are coming in, it looks like we will have a small handful more in the football program next year than we did this year. So that’s really good. We’re hoping to get a few more upper classmen out because that’s important as well. I would say the golden pinnacle of what we could want here in football is 60 kids, about 15 per class. If we’re at 40, about 10 per class, that’s still in good shape. A happy medium is about 12 per class. Again, we’re doing everything we can to get a good number and are also hoping to hire a new coach. The process has been going well and we are very excited.
Which sports would you add and/or support if the catalog of sports that Priory offered was entirely up to you?
If it were entirely up to me? Now I’m going to add some things that we talked about earlier. It wouldn’t be just me saying, “Hey, I love volleyball, Phil Brotherton loves volleyball, so let’s add it.” We have to be smart about it in terms of like I said, getting the numbers, making sure we can sustain it over a couple of years, making sure we can get coaches, making sure we can get the gym time. So if all that is in place for whatever sport you’re talking about, like I said, I think everybody gets into this industry and education because we love working with kids as teachers, as coaches, whatever. So I at my core do not want to tell kids, no, like, you can’t try this. You have to tell them no sometimes, but we want to make everything available that we can. That’s a great question. You said just me personally, so, this is what MSHAA calls an emerging sport right now. I’m a big fan of bowling. So I would love to add that. Well, and I know that complicates things that I said before, but it has to be off campus, it gets even trickier.
In the future, do you see a need to integrate with other schools similar to the Whitfield/Principia dynamic?
Yeah, they call that a co-op. Whitfield and Principia joined together to do that. I mean, I would say if it’s a sport that we currently offer, 1 of our 12, that would be probably a last resort. If it were between folding the program or co-opping, I think we would probably co-op. I’m more comfortable co-opping if it’s a sport we don’t have. There were a couple examples over the years where we didn’t have a sport and a kid was like, “hey, can I do this?” And we said, well, we can co-op with CBC to do it for water polo. It was what the kid wanted to do, and we did that, and that was great. I would rather not surrender anything we do. I’d rather build what we do, you know, to the best of our ability to keep it kind of in house. So, as a last resort, possibly, but we’ll do everything we can to avoid that. And not that it’s the worst thing in the world, but the other thing is like, when you co-op, the state looks at your enrollment to determine what class you’re in. When Principia, who has a football program, say they’re in class one, they co-op with Whitfield, they take on every kid that goes to Whitfield as part of their enrollment and automatically pretty much get bumped up at least one class. So, there’s other details like that to look into, but last resort, I’d say.
Just for a quick clarification, how long did water polo exist for a Priory student?
It was either 1 or 2 years, and it was the individual that wanted to do it. This was 4 or 5 years ago, and he primarily wore the CBC cap. So, you know, he was on CBC but in the state’s eyes they were allowing us to join them knowing we didn’t have a team.
What are you proudest of in terms of current Priory sports?
Let’s see. There’s some obvious things, you know, I think of John Varley who wins two state titles in tennis in a row. That’s extremely impressive, and obviously we’re very, very proud. He puts in a ton of work and he’s really talented, he’s playing in college, that’s really cool. We have three somewhere from three to five guys planning to continue sports next year in college. I think that’s great. As I look at the athletics program and I think of achievements, I look at it more holistically. I don’t reflect on seasons that don’t go well like, were we 10-0? Okay, that’s a great year. Or were we 0-10? That’s a horrible year. Obviously you’d like to win every game and win state, but did we improve? Did the kids improve? Did the coaches do a good job? And that’s part of my role , some of the things that I observe. Did we provide good opportunities for our kids? Do we have good equipment? Do we have a competitive schedule? That sort of thing. I love when we have a first year coach too. I think of the baseball coach, Matt Hahn, who this is his second spring as our head varsity baseball coach. I don’t know if you guys know him. Just kind of observing and watching him grow as a coach, he does such a good job, I think, of not only having baseball knowledge and having good precise practice plans and game plans and strategy, but getting to know the boys on the team and making it fun, I would bet almost every kid on that team, probably all of them would say that he’s a nice person and he’s a good coach and he really cares about us. I love hearing stuff like that. I love when our soccer referee comes up to me and says, your kids had great sportsmanship in this game and your field is the best natural grass field we’ve been on all season. Those kinds of things are really cool to me. And the stats on the team? Oh, yeah, they’re only a piece of the story for sure. And I look back on asking people, why were sports good for you? The guys that have won state or went undefeated. That’s all great, and that’s part of it, too, but it’s always fun memories of learning and having fun. Essentially learning some hidden talents about yourself, maybe learning how to lift weights and run and stay in shape, learning how to, you know, work hard and work as a team and be disciplined and how that carries over the rest of your life. And then just the joy of being with your friends and doing something that’s fun, you know, that that always comes first.
Have you considered extending certain sports like soccer into junior school, which would add another option in addition to Cross Country and Football.
Yeah, I would say we’ve thought about it over the years. I don’t know that it makes the most sense right now. I mean, if you look at this as a numbers question it doesn’t make sense. There may be years where we go, “well, we have this many kids and enough of them are interested in football and soccer and cross country, somewhat evenly.” I mean, you can have less and still have a cross-country team if you think about numbers only, but you need for football and soccer a certain number to have a team. You can’t have a football team with 11 kids, you can’t have a soccer team with 10 kids. I mean, even with 11 on football, that’s enough on the field, but you’re never gonna survive a season with 11. Soccer, 11, you’re never gonna survive because somebody’s gonna get hurt, somebody’s gonna miss, get sick, you know, and it just doesn’t work. So, not only do you need the numbers, but you need the kids’ decisions to be somewhat evenly spread and as it is right now, I just don’t think that that’s a plausible option for us to add something to the fall in middle school. And they’re gonna find a team. So many of them are still playing CYC soccer with their parish team, or they’re on a select sort of club team. So the opportunities are there. We even have a Priory CYC soccer team. Now it’s CYC, so they practice once a week and play a game once a week, so it’s not like the five days that we practice here.
Will Esports ever be an official Priory sport? What about other big clubs such as Robotics, Scholar Bowl, and Mock Trial?
No. Misha is the state association where all the, you know, you have a state championship. Misha is the association, everyone joins to be part of that. A few schools don’t join it, but they don’t get to participate in normal playoffs. so MSHAA stands for Missouri State High School Activities Association. It’s not athletics, as everyone thinks. So scholar bowl is actually already in existence with MSHAA. That’s already not a sport, but MSHAA doesn’t deal just with sports. They’re purposely an activities association. Every sport is an activity, like baseball is an activity. Esports specifically, they are currently what you call an emerging activity. You can find all this on the MSHAA website, too. Bowling’s actually another one that’s titled an emerging sport or activity. Esports is, I don’t know the exact numbers, but there’s somewhere within that realm where they haven’t quite made it up to an official activity yet. I would say here at Priory, if that goes through the state and becomes an official sport or activity, never say never. I know a big part of our mission with sports is to get kids physically active. So I don’t know that we would ever count that as your sport. I could see that maybe counting as the activity or the “other thing”, as many people call it. You’re not getting that physical side. and that’s Benedictine value. I don’t I don’t think we’ll ever get away from all.
What does sixth grade sports look like?
The plan is that they won’t be like the current seventh and eighth grade, where they have sports here every day that we schedule games for, we have coaches for, they have practice time. Right now, they’re just doing PE. They’re gonna have a traditional PE class. And this is as I understand it, they’re gonna be done around 3 o’clock like the high school guys and they’ll have a traditional PE type class every day at some point in their day. And that’ll be here they get their physical activity. Now, could that change in the future, maybe. I mean, Chaminade has a 6th-8th grade and they schedule 6th like they do 7th and 8th.
What exactly are the changes happening in regards to Priory sports requirements for next year?
We tried to make it as simple as possible, and this has gone on for months of trying to get as close to perfection with this as we can. We’ve interviewed a ton of people, including all parents, coaches. Juniors and seniors will have one sport and one activity. We have increased the amount we’re allowing into strength and conditioning. This year, we capped it at 20, we might have gone up to 23 or four one of the seasons, but now we’re capping it at 50 because we want more kids to be able to get in there because the requirement increased. We don’t want kids to have a season where they don’t know where to go. Winter’s always the trickiest one, it seems like for the highest percentage of kids to not know. They can’t skate for hockey, they might get cut from basketball, and they can’t wrestle for some reason. We have brought back winter soccer as well in high school, at least that’s the plan to give people another kind of place and another thing to do in that winter season. The biggest change is for freshmen and sophomores, and instead of having one sport, one activity, it’s two sports, one activity. So it gets a little less. Juniors and seniors get a little less one sport, one activity. Juniors and seniors have a lot going on is kind of the thought behind that. Now, you could still be a senior and play three sports. There’s no rule against going over that, but um that’s going to be the requirement.
