where dreams are bigger
Some final thoughts as we bid farewell to the 2010-2011 school year.
If you want a real treat, check out Emma White’s music video entitled Virginia Goodbye.
“It pretty much tells my life – relationships, emotions, change, hardships,” Emma said.
“I can’t just sit down and write a song. I have to be emotionally connected to the situation.”
Daniel Bagbey filmed, edited, and directed the video.
It was their senior project.
Emma dedicated the song to her grandfather Charlie Bryant, who passed away during her sophomore year.
“Pop Pop started me with country music,” said Emma, who estimates that she’s written and composed 25 songs.
“Every morning when he drove me to school, we listened to K-95. He got me my first guitar when I was in the fifth grade.”
Emma, a guitar pupil of David Robinson at Collegiate for 8 years, is headed to Belmont University (Nashville) where she hopes to enter the songwriting program.
Her goals?
“I really don’t know yet,” she said. “I’ll go to college, see what I like, and see where it takes me.
“I could find a job in a recording studio. I could be a songwriter. It’ll be something to do with music. I know that for sure.”
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Twenty-three members of the class of ‘11 hope to compete athletically in college.
Nineteen were recruited (14 Division I, one Division II, five Division III), three will attempt to walk-on, and one is a DI recruited walk-on.
For two, the dream of suiting up at the next level did not come without setbacks.
Sam Sharpe, a well-regarded place kicker and punter, was on the radar screen of numerous college football coaches until an injury to his right knee in the Fork Union game October 22 ended his season.
As he hit the deck after being blocked during a first-period punt return, Sharpe felt excruciating pain for about 10 seconds.
He then left the field unaided and reported to athletic trainer Shannon Winston, who held him out as a precaution.
“It didn’t swell up at all,” he recalled. “I iced it that night, but when I woke up the next morning, it had ballooned up so big that I couldn’t see my kneecap.”
The diagnosis was a torn anterior cruciate ligament and medial meniscus.
Several days later, he underwent surgery, then began the long rehab process.
Though disappointed, he cheered on his football and lacrosse teammates and kept his eye on the goal of walking on at Georgia.
“Some things you can’t change,” said Sharpe, who still earned All-Prep League and all-state honors as a place kicker. “You just have to get over it.”
Julia Sroba is a talented and oft-decorated three-sport athlete who had her sights set on a college soccer career.
She won the 2009 League of Independent Schools cross country championship, but that fall she also dinged her right hamstring playing soccer for the Richmond Strikers.
She persevered throughout winter track and spring soccer, but this past November, an MRI which revealed a tear.
“It was one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever encountered,” said Julia, who missed the state cross country meet and much of the winter track season.
“I had to remember that there’s a silver lining to everything. You don’t always know what it is.”
By spring, she was pain-free for the first time in almost a year, but her respite was short-lived.
“Against Norfolk Collegiate (March 24), I went in for a tackle,” she recalled. “My right knee basically went in two different directions.
“I heard a pop. I thought it was my ACL. Thankfully it wasn’t.”
She eventually returned but reinjured the knee against Douglas Freeman and watched from the sideline until the Cougars’ last two games.
She intends to be healthy and well-prepared when she reports to Virginia this fall as a recruited walk-on
“Sitting on the bench, you realize how much fun playing is,” she said. “I definitely appreciate things a lot more now.”
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We bid farewell to several friends who are retiring or heading off for new adventures.
Among them is Patrick Loach, who joined us in 1995 as director of technology and both literally and figuratively guided the department into the 21st Century.
He became assistant Upper School head in 2006, served as interim US head during in 2009-2010, and resumed his previous post this past year.
Loach, his wife Emily, and their son Charlie are headed to Houston where he will be Upper School head at The Kinkaid School.
“Patrick was here during an important time in the life of the Collegiate,” said Keith Evans, Collegiate’s head of school.
“He not only established the entire technology program but grew beyond that into providing leadership for the Upper School.
“He loves kids. Kids love him. It’s been a remarkable career.
“Kinkaid is getting a great leader.”
