"Having it cut short was definitely painful. People say to play each game like it could be your last, and all of the seniors on our team really know what that means now," he says. "It is a sharp reminder to appreciate every moment you have doing the things you love. On a different note, this catastrophe has also brought out a lot of good in the different communities that I have been lucky enough to be involved in."

In particular, he cites his former coach, Head Coach of Pingry's Boys' Varsity Lacrosse Team, Mike Webster, who reached out to alumni players when Big Blue's own season was put on hold. "He asked each of us to record a video of ourselves teaching a drill that we like to pass along to the current players, for practicing while in isolation," Thomas explains. "The positivity and community outreach that I have felt since the beginning of social distancing have been inspiring and uplifting, and I hope that these videos help fuel that attitude, and pass it along to the younger Pingry players throughout these unprecedented times." 

His ability to see the bigger picture is not surprising for the High School Lacrosse All-American, who led Big Blue to its second straight Non-Public B (NPB) state title his senior year, and helped the team advance to the Tournament of Champions (TOC) finals for the first time in the program's more than 60-year history. As a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) throughout college, and now, upon graduation, a freshly Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Army, he's about to report to Fort Benning for training. He is clear-eyed about his experiences, his successes, and his desire to give back. "Growing up in New Jersey, you tend to meet people of similar backgrounds, but getting to meet people who didn't go to college or who have different inspirations for why they joined the Army is something that appealed to me. I'm looking forward to that new perspective."

But perhaps the most indelible memory as a Pingry student athlete is the Somerset County Championship finals her senior year, when she led the team to victory with the lone, game-winning goal. "That felt great," she says with a smile. "I remember one of my teammates jumped on me and I caught her mid-air. [Then-Head] Coach [Andrew] Egginton told me after the game that he didn’t think I wasn’t going to make the shot—he thought I shot too early!"

Tanika also claims a successful, four-year tenure as a forward with the Seton Hall University Pirates. A Big East Conference player with an arduous travel schedule, she often saw airports twice a week. But ask her about her Pingry memories, and she recalls them with precision, and a good dose of affection. "In terms of team chemistry, there was nothing better than Pingry. . . .I enjoyed playing for Pingry more than anything else."   

"I see them a lot at meets. . . We have our own group chat and are always comparing workouts, asking who’s running where on any given weekend, that sort of thing. They have been super helpful in telling me to trust myself and trust the workouts my coach gives me," he says.   

At an indoor meet his freshman year, when Ben ran a 1:55 PR for the 800, Jamie Barker ’16, who happened to be there as a Haverford College runner, walked over to congratulate him. "I just love keeping in touch with the guys and seeing what they’re doing, rooting for them when we’re at the same meet," he adds.

Pingry's record-holder in the 600-meter run (1:24.57), the third-fastest male finisher in the 800 (1:54.70), and among its fastest milers, Ben is one of the school's best middle distance runners ever, according to Head Coach of the Boys' Varsity Cross Country Team, Matt Horesta. Qualifying for the Division III National Championships in cross country and track are goals of his at Connecticut College—and he's tapping into Pingry friendships and training history to get there. 

When the two-year Big Blue letter-winner in basketball and three-year winner in baseball realized that playing Division I college baseball might be beyond his reach, he simply changed course. “Athletics were always a huge part of my identity at Pingry; I didn’t want to give up that part of myself in college,” he recalls. “My dad suggested crew as a potential option, so I did a ton of research on it—I became a little bit obsessed. I read The Harvard Crimson archives and found a bunch of old articles about the crew team’s walk-on program. It just seemed really cool. I loved the tradition of it.”

After many summer hours spent working out in the Bugliari Athletics Center and even more hours spent learning technique and building fitness on Harvard’s ergometers the following fall, Zachary was “boated.” He says he’ll never forget his debut race on the Charles: “It was early on a Saturday morning, 25 degrees out, my parents had come up for the weekend to watch—I was so excited. But I was also absolutely terrified. Suddenly the race officials are telling us to go, and I’m rowing as hard as I can. A 5k takes about 15-16 minutes, so I’m exhausted, I can’t feel my hands at all. But I managed to make it through the whole race without doing anything too embarrassing.”

Attitude, discipline, and teamwork are three lessons learned as a Big Blue student athlete that Zachary says he draws on now as a Harvard student athlete. “I have very fond memories of being in team environments at Pingry, of running 17s [laps of the gym] before the basketball season even begins. At the time I felt horrible, but you realize you’re not doing them for yourself; you’re running them for the guy next to you.”

“At first, I didn’t want to go to the same college as Diana; it just ended up happening,” says Julia, a four-year letterer and senior captain of Pingry’s Girls’ Varsity Squash Team. “I loved New York City, and it was definitely really nice to have Diana and all of her friends both on and off the team welcome me.”  

By all accounts, playing together on the same collegiate stage has made the sisters even closer, and their game even better. “Playing competitive squash against a sibling for as long as we have, you know each other so well. We’re sisters, but we’re teammates as well, pushing each other to play our best,” says Diana, a four-year letterer, senior captain, and All-American for Big Blue. “We compete for the lineup at the start of each season and play challenge matches. We try to keep it pretty serious, but we fool around a bit, too.” Fellow teammates and coaches are drawn to their matches when they practice against each other. They resemble one another, and even move alike on the court. “Our shots are similar but our strategies are pretty different,” added Diana, who was named captain of Columbia's team her senior year. Oh, and both are majoring in Applied Math (Diana at Columbia’s School of Engineering, Julia in Columbia College, the university’s liberal arts program) and minoring in Economics.

Playing together wasn’t always so enjoyable, they admit. “I think we irritated each other,” recalls Julia. “When I played her at Pingry I remember being so annoyed by what she was wearing!” adds Diana. “It’s way different in college now.” Despite the challenges of being a sister squash “act” (“There’s definitely a balance between being sisters and me being a leader on the team,” says Diana; “Everyone expected a mini-Diana, so I had to carve out my own place on the team,” says Julia), they agree on at least one thing: During Big Blue matches, they were each other’s loudest fans. At Columbia, they are still.

Recipient of the 2016 Tom Boyer Football Award and a Skyland Conference Scholar Athlete, Michael says when he was little, he thought basketball was his calling. But then he started Pingry in Grade 5, joined the Middle School football teams in Grades 7 and 8, and hasn’t stopped playing since. Memories of his senior-year Homecoming game—“my best game at Pingry”—and Friday Night Lights remain vivid for him. “I was really stressed out that whole game. I thought ‘I have to win.’ I didn’t want my last Friday Night Lights game to be a loss,” he recalls. “I couldn’t relax the whole game. But then I had a punt return that Coach Shilts later called the play of the year. After that, I could relax.”

Despite playing on—and captaining—a football team that fought hard but fell short of a winning record, Michael cherished the experience, and brought lessons learned with him to Middlebury. “It really taught me how to compete,” he explains. “We weren’t winning a lot but I learned to get into that mental state and keep going even when it’s not going your way. That transfers into life.”

Come late August, he will say goodbye to Pingry and his old teammates, and return to Vermont. He’s looking forward to his sophomore year. “It’s cool to be a college athlete. It’s something I have always dreamed of. But I will always remember the friends I made at Pingry, the connections with the guys on the team. The high school experience is really unique.”

"It's no secret that you have a lot of work at Pingry and you have as much if not more in college, so time management is extremely important," he says. "I think the pressures on and off the field at Pingry helped prepare me for life now and what it takes to be as successful as I can regardless of the situation."

During his first Macalester's football season, he was 3-of-6 in field goal attempts and made 22 out of 27 PATs. His senior year, he ranked second in the Midwest Conference in field goals, seventh in total points, and tied the school record with four field goals in a single game (the fourth was a go-ahead with less than five minutes left in the game). At one point, he ranked fifth among Division III colleges and universities in the country in field goals per game. He also played for the school's club ice hockey team, sang with their coed a cappella group—the ChroMACtics—and served as a campus tour guide.

An economics major, he is considering work in finance or graduate school. Because he transitioned from soccer to football he has a year of eligibility left, so playing a third year of football may be on the horizon.

As a freshman, he joined the cross country team. When he decided to try track his sophomore year, competing in the 3200-meter (2 miles) run, he was pretty sure his strong suit was as a distance runner, and that’s just what he focused on. Until, that is, Boys’ Varsity Cross Country and Track Coach Matt Horesta had him try the 800, a grueling, nearly all-out sprint for half a mile. Coach Horesta’s instincts were right. His junior year, Justin placed third in the event in the state group meet (he was seeded seventh), qualifying for the New Jersey Meet of Champions, and catching the eye of college coaches. By his senior year, he clinched second at the state group championship in a meet-record time, and qualified for the prestigious Emerging Elite 800-meter run at New Balance Nationals, where he ran 1:54.66, the second-fastest time in Pingry’s history.

“That was a big moment for me,” he recalls, four years later. “Coach Horesta definitely helped me to develop in an event I hadn’t before considered. I began talking with college coaches, and the door really opened for me in terms of being able to compete on a collegiate level.” (He is also quick to credit his other Pingry track & field coaches and mentors: Tom Cladek, Mark Sepkowski, and Gerry Vanasse.)

The accolades piled up from there. As a freshman at Williams, he was a member of their 4x800 NESCAC Championship team, a team that went on, the following week, to win Division III New England’s. His achievements earned him First Team All-NESCAC and All-New England honors. And that was just his freshman year.

Looking back at his Pingry athletic experiences, however, the big meets and big honors aren’t what stand out for him. “The days leading up to an important race—talking to Coach about my goals—were almost more memorable than the race itself,” he says. “That’s when the training is done, you know you’ve put in all the hard work, and Coach Horesta was always confident that I could succeed. He taught us that it’s not a question of whether you can, but whether you will.”

And when Justin is home during college breaks, he meets with Coach Horesta and his old teammates for dinner, just to talk, once again.

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What stands out the most for him, when he recalls these competitive years? “Honestly, it’s not the big tournaments,” he says. “Pingry students and parents were always there, cheering us on, and at the end of every meet, they would bring us food. That’s one of my fondest memories. It shows what a tight-knit community we were.”

Time constraints as a student of Penn’s Wharton School of Business (he is triple majoring in finance, statistics, and operation/information systems) led him to close the chapter on his fencing career, but he, he says, he still regularly draws on many of the leadership skills he learned from being a Big Blue athlete. “I began fencing at age 12, but many of my teammates were new to the sport and had a lot to learn. I tried to put myself in their shoes, help and mentor them.” A member of Phi Gamma Nu, a business fraternity on Penn’s campus, Wharton Investment and Trading Group, and the Wharton China Business Society, he has ample opportunity to bond with and mentor students on his new campus as well. For Wenrui, even looking back on his days as an accomplished sabre fencer, that is what is most important.

“Winning a tournament was just one aspect of the game. I value the connections to the community a lot more.”