St. Gregory’s Academy offers a well-established athletics program with structured team training and interscholastic league play in soccer and rugby. The St. Gregory’s Highlanders pride themselves on adherence to disciplined and perseverant practice, play, and conduct. Despite the small size of the student body, the Highlanders have achieved unprecedented victories on both the soccer and rugby field, claiming first place in their soccer division in 2007, and taking the Eastern PA Rugby Union title in 2009 after back-to-back undefeated seasons. In addition to these organized efforts, the students are given guided physical education and intramural sporting events in the afternoons and on weekends.
It is no secret that adolescence is a trying time. The word adolescence itself is derived from a word meaning “to burn.” But, as fire can be a destroyer it is also a nurturer; a source of culture. The masculine adolescent propensity is one that seeks physical experiences and their emotional corollaries. Adolescent passions are bent on encounters that experiment with the dangerous and the amorous. Such passions are not unnatural, and therefore they are not to be discouraged; only guided. Too much restriction results in deformities that cripple a person for life, which is itself a risky and emotional enterprise. Adolescence must be permitted, though it involves the taking of risks. The risks can be calculated; the falls, few. But risks there must be, and falls as well, if young men are to learn and grow. Adolescence (especially male adolescence) must be allowed to run its normal, healthy courses in the process of human development, which includes not only the body, but the soul as well. A mature Faith cannot exist in a body, mind, and soul that have been inhibited from their due maturation by excessive caution.
