Good morning, Williston, and welcome parents, families, and guests. A couple of technical thoughts this morning. If you come forward this morning and it starts to get a little wet just please be really careful, students, if you walk on the plywood boards. We may have rugs to put down there to make it a little bit better. But another three inches of rain, just like last year, has made things a little soggy. but as I look at some of the girls with the blankets over their knees, I’m reminded that last year at Commencement it was about 37 degrees or 40 degrees, so we’re doing a little bit better than that.
As we always do at this time of the year, we meet to honor work done in our classrooms, to recognize the achievements and the talent of Williston students who have excelled in a particular area. Yesterday, at our athletic awards ceremony, I commented that while we recognized individuals for their athletic prowess, my mind turns to the traits that lead to individual accomplishment: dedication, commitment, hard work, persistence. Each of us holds these latent potentials and so it is this morning, as we recognize truly remarkable academic performance, that I am reminded of the collective whole, that all of us under this tent make each one of us better. Before I emcee this mornings ceremony, I want to recognize all the students here for a year well done—I guess the underclassmen still have some assessments coming up though. (Laughter.) You guys love that—and to note that as academic awards are read by the department heads, please pay attention to the names and the citations of those awards that you hear because what they do is they memorialize the connection that you have to the long and storied history of Williston. And I think it’s really important and really nice to listen to those names of the honored teachers who came before and students who came before and classes who’ve paid to honor and tribute to friends and mentors though the names of these awards. So please pay a little bit of attention to that. Now on to the events.
See the full list of award winners here.
Thank you, Jeff, and as coach of this ’73 team I am honored and pleased to be able to be here today. Before I begin the introductions, I would like to tell why they are deserving of this honor. Of course the 12-0 duel meet record tells one story, but who they beat tells the real story: Beating Andover, Exeter, Hotchkiss, Mt. Hermon, and super rival Deerfield, and along the way beating West Point plebes, Coast Guard cadets, and freshmen teams—Dartmouth, Harvard, Williams—and a victory over our nemesis Yale!