Back in late September, Upper School Deans Rob Hoepfl and Julia Dunbar, along with Alan Van Antwerp, Carter Abbott, and Coach David Fahey, were brainstorming ideas on how to increase student participation in the upcoming soccer doubleheader at SI Stadium. Signups were lagging due to student participation in other after-school activities, so ideas and incentives were bandied about (Dress Down Day? Ice cream truck?) until Coach Fahey sent an email offering a suggestion on behalf of the club he was an advisor on.
the BBQ Club is telling me a FOOD TRUCK would be the best incentive.
they are also telling me that if they were permitted to BBQ at SI Stadium from 4 to 5:45 that would drive student attendance. The idea would be that if they put out the charcoal at 5:45, anyone outside would be butts in seats by the girls second half.
finally, they are telling me that rather than having the student buy their own tickets, the school buying the tickets and assigning the $45 charge to the kids student accounts for the 1- TICKET, 2- BUS, and 3- BBQ club food.
Shortly after, Dean Hoepfl sent an email to the Upper School with the subject line: Announcement on behalf of BBQ Club and the October 7th Soccer Double-Header. The response was overwhelming. Suddenly plenty of students were signed up and on the bus, in the stands, and, only moments before entering the stadium, enjoying hot dogs and hamburgers grilled by seniors Luke Burns and Connor Lamb (before they were shut down by the concession staff for a little-too-close competition, though not before the security guard joined in on the tailgating for a bit).
BBQ Club was started by Harrison Hackett ’26 along with Luke, Connor, Logan Gedroic ’26, and Henry Foster ’26. In the fall, the grills were run by Luke and Connor (with the help of Mr. Hackett, who lugs the grills to the top of the World Cup pavilion while the actual club members are still in school awaiting the last bell). In the spring, Harrison, Logan, Brody and Henry plan to take over the grilling. The club fields plenty of requests to BBQ at home games, and there is even a plan for winter bbqing for the upcoming basketball games. “I mean… have you seen the Bills fans tailgate in the winter?” Harrison enthuses. “We can make it like that.”
Word spreads quickly when the BBQ Club will be at a game. “We started advertising [on social], like ‘hey, come show your support for our teams,’” says Connor, “and then it just kept going from there.”
The long lines and full stomachs beg the question: what is it about BBQ Club? For starters, the food is good. Like, really good. With the help of Mr. Hackett, they come prepared with two grills, the Weber Smokey Joe (about the size of a big plate), and a travel Weber charcoal grill. The burgers are seasoned with McCormick’s pub hamburger mix (formally called Grill Mates Worcestershire Pub Burger Seasoning), and the steaks are marinated and seasoned with McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning. With ingredients perfectly applied, it’s no wonder there are such crowds clamoring for the food. At a girls soccer game, they cooked 60 pounds of brisket (they sell food for $5 and use the funds to purchase food for the next outing). Just last week, they sold 30 hot dogs and 60 burgers during the game and then another 30 after, along with 30 pounds of chicken for good measure. Mr. Hackett picks up the meat from Maplewood’s specialty butcher shop called N&K Prime. Meanwhile, boxes of chips were donated by Coach Marquis Ormond, who recently suggested the group start serving hot chocolate, too. “You get a plate, you get chips, and you get a water—and all you have to do is pay five dollars,” Harrison says. Take that, Shake Shack.
For $5, one can even get a Tia Burger, which is a regular burger—with cheese, lettuce, tomato, mustard, and ketchup, if that’s your preference—on a tortilla instead of a bun. It’s become a popular menu item. “I should probably copyright it,” says Mr. Hackett.
The food is a huge draw. But look around at the smiling faces, the friends lingering after a game to spend time together, the old friends connecting over food, and there’s something else that makes it special, too. Harrison calls it school spirit, but it’s something more than that. For Harrison, who has moved so often in his young life that he admits he “can’t be in one place more than three years”, he knows how important—and fleeting—friends and communities can be, and how important it is to make the best of them. With the BBQ Club, he wanted to find a way to enrich the community he found at Pingry.
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“I’ve had my fair share of travel.” Harrison comes from a tight-knit family who moved a lot because of Mr. Hackett’s coaching career. He’s quick to rattle off the places he’s called home: Buffalo and Syracuse when he was a toddler, then back to Buffalo through Grade 1 before heading down to warmer climates in Jacksonville, Florida. Middle school was spent in Green Bay, Wisconsin, then freshman-year high school was in Colorado. He arrived at Pingry his sophomore year, and he’s taken a liking to New Jersey. “It feels a little bit more like home, in a way.”
When he was a little kid, he had mixed feelings about moving. “Originally when I was younger, I was scared. Like I always dreaded the first day of school,” he admits. “But now I’m excited to learn about new people. I’m excited to see new environments.”
His last full day in Buffalo also happened to be his birthday, so his party became part birthday celebration but also part goodbye, a going-away party at a bouncy house with all his first-grade friends. He didn’t quite grasp what it all meant. “It’s hard to tell a kid, ‘hey, everything that you know is kind of gonna go away and you’re gonna get a blank slate.’” They arrived in Florida, before their furniture arrived, and Harrison recalls sitting on the floor, eating takeout while watching a TV that was also propped up on the floor.
He has fond memories of Florida, but after a few years, he was off to Wisconsin. “It was sad because I lost a lot of friends,” he says before pausing in thought. “You also kind of find out who your true friends are when you leave, because some of them will actually check up on you, and some will not… The ones that stay are the ones that actually really care about you,” he says, before adding, “I’ve had a lot of people come and go.”
He has gained a sense of how fleeting things can be, and it’s given him a sense of gratitude that informs his approach to friendships and community now. “It’s simple,” he says, “be thankful for everything you have,” he emphasizes. “For me, I could have a lot of things and then all of a sudden they could be taken away, just like that… It’s kinda nice knowing that not everything’s permanent in life and that everything can change very quickly.”
This is why the BBQ Club is more than just about hamburgers and hot dogs. It is about enriching the community you’re in, while you’re in it. Because who knows what tomorrow could bring?
Is that a little scary? Maybe. But Harrison thinks that’s the point. “I actually enjoy it,” he says calmly. “I embrace it. Because the emotions you feel from it are a privilege, to be honest.” He pauses here, looking thoughtful. “It’s a privilege to be nervous about what’s to come, or scared of what’s to come,” he says. Uncertainty is a part of life, so why not embrace it? After all, the places that we call home are really just the people who make us feel at home.
“For me, the only thing that matters when I think of home is my family. Knowing I can talk to my family all the time, whenever I need to, means a lot to me. Everything around me, my environment might change, but the people I still talk to and I love and I get to have a relationship with…” he trails off. “If other people who haven’t moved kind of understand that their home was never where they lived. It was who they were with.”
For Harrison, who is getting ready to go to Amherst next fall where he will play soccer, he is just about ready for the change. He mentions that he gets antsy after three years in one place, and says of the feeling that “I didn’t choose it, but it’s a part of me. I’ve learned to take certain people with me, and let the rest go.” He is, as a senior, in his third and final year at Pingry, a place that he found a welcoming community, a place that finagled a few rules so he and his friends could find a way to enrich the community, too, in the form of crowds surrounding a few grills and something called a Tia Burger.
And after he leaves another place he’s called home, what does he think people will miss about him? “The BBQ Club,” he says without skipping a beat. “But I’m gonna give it to some juniors. I’ll pass it on. It needs to stay.”
