GSB Athletes Focus on More Than Sports

by David Pasquale

Director of Athletics

The Athletic Program at Gill St. Bernard’s has been receiving quite a bit of attention lately. Over the last three years, we’ve won sixteen conference championships, five sectional crowns, two state titles, and five of our teams have been ranked in the “top-20” in the state. In 2009 we became the smallest school in the history of Somerset County to win a county championship in a team sport and two of our coaches were recently named New Jersey Coach-of-the-Year in their sport. 65 GSB student-athletes earned post-season recognition last year and roughly 20 of our recent graduates are currently competing at the college level.

These same student-athletes have also achieved at an incredibly high level in the classroom.  Several were identified as National Merit Scholars. In fact, recently graduated Gill athletes are currently enrolled at Princeton, Georgetown, Cornell, Williams, and several other top-flight colleges and universities.

While we’re all very proud of these fantastic athletic and academic accomplishments, perhaps it is “off the field” where our stars shine most brightly. Our girls soccer team dedicated an October game to Breast Cancer Awareness, raising nearly $1400 for this worthy cause, while the boys hold an annual clinic at the Midland School for children with developmental disabilities. As part of a “Team up 4 Kids” project, our boys basketball players welcomed a new teammate last season from the Goryeb Children’s Hospital in Morristown and our cross country teams took part in “Miles for Matheny” as well as the Steeplechase Distance Run to benefit the Steeplechase Cancer Center at the Somerset Medical Center. The “Knight Club,” a service organization of GSB student-athletes, collected and donated over 1300 pairs of shoes as part of the nationally acclaimed “Soles 4 Souls” campaign.

Our teams are doing well and our student-athletes are very talented. However, it’s important to recognize that there’s much more to being a Gill St. Bernard’s student-athlete than championships and school records.