Off the turf field, and outside of Pingry, Jared plays competitive lacrosse for his town team, the Cougars, as well as for a club team, NJ Diesel. This winter, he’s considering joining an indoor box lacrosse team. He has also played basketball for as long as he can remember, most recently for his YMCA team and with an organization called Starting 5ive. He plans to try out for his town team this coming season. Flag football is yet another interest of Jared’s; he is playing in a local league for the first time this year.
You might forgive an active student athlete like Jared for yawning in PE class, but he is just as passionate a competitor in the Lower School’s gymnasium and fields as he is on his own teams. Dodgeball and Capture the Jack (a variation on Capture the Flag, devised by Lower Schoolers) are his favorites, but it’s easy to see he gets excited about playing any sport with his friends. “I just finished the cross country unit; we had to run a lot. And I’m doing a unit on pickleball now. It’s all fun!”
Does he bring any lessons from PE class into the classroom with him? “One thing I learned from Mr. LaFontaine [Lower School PE teacher] is that school comes before sports,” Jared says. “He tells us, ‘Work hard, play hard.’ Sometimes, when I’m working really hard, I like to do sports to give my mind a break.”
Jared looks forward to playing lacrosse and basketball when he moves up to the Middle School next year. “I think it’s going to be fun to be able to play for my school,” he says. He remembers his former lacrosse coach taking him to see Big Blue versus Bridgewater-Raritan
(the coach’s alma mater) in the semifinals of the 2016 Tournament of Champions, at Kean State University. He was only in the third grade at the time, but the experience clearly made a big impression. “Pingry ended up winning!” he remembers, smiling.