HHA Home
The Official Web Site of The Hill School Hockey Association
Welcome to the Online Community of Hill Hockey Supporters & Alumni

News Archive

posted: 2009-03-23

A Band of Brothers

by David Dougherty, Headmaster


Boy's Varsity Hockey Seniors with Max 2008-2009

Over the years Kay and I have attended many parties, receptions, and ceremonies honoring Hill athletes at season’s end. They are always fun and always heart-warming, as coaches, kids, and parents re-live high- and low-lights of a year. There are always some of each.

The boys’ hockey dinner on February 22nd, was a good one: a celebration of a terrific season (including three victories, one of them at 7-0, over Lawrenceville); of wonderful leadership from Mr. Mulhern and his staff and from co-captains Michael Brofft and Jake Colby; and of vigorous support from team parents (who trundled from Pottstown to Albany to Millbrook to Lake Placid and other frigid outposts during the winter). But special that night, even unique, was the recognition of the bond of 23 great kids and really special Sixth Formers (check out their photo on this site) through a most unlikely source – their team manager from Nanjing, China, Max Zhang.

In his second year at The Hill, Max is admired as an excellent student, a superb musician, and an outstanding prefect. And he’s a fun-loving, genuinely kind kid. But there is more. Teachers here respect his discipline and his capacity for very hard work, day-to-day. They admire too his eagerness to experiment, to try new things, which he does with a child-like wonder. Indeed, one of his teachers remarked to me once of Max’s amazement at “the newness of everything,” as if every experience here is cause for greater wisdom or joy. All of us admire how he seizes new opportunity, learns a new lesson. So too does his father, who wrote about Max as his son prepared to leave home for The Hill, on the other side of the world, “He has to control his life far away from us. But, as always, I have faith in my son.”

And all of this came together on the evening of February 22nd. In a speech at the hockey dinner, Max talked about the season, the game of hockey itself (about which he knew virtually nothing when he became the team’s manager last winter), and the thrill of suiting up for the team’s final home game – a special surprise honor extended to him when he entered the locker room that day, where he was shown his own locker, his own uniform.

And he concluded with this. He said that when he returns to The Hill one day as a father himself, enrolling his son or daughter, he said he’d walk that youngster down to the basement of Sweeney, down those long hallways lined with team photos, find that great picture of the boys’ varsity hockey team, 2009 (with him on the first row), and say proudly to that new Hill student, “Those are my brothers.” At which time his teammates mobbed him, and we less composed adults wept.

And so here’s to the boys’ varsity hockey team, their coaches, their Sixth Form leaders, their parents, and their special bond, in part courtesy of Nanjing, China.

David R. Dougherty
 

top^

The Official Web Site of The Hill School Hockey Association

 

copyright © 2008 by the Hill School Hockey Association
web development & maintenance by www.schoolties.us