Hotchkiss School hosts summer institute for elite athletes

LAKEVILLE — This summer at The Hotchkiss School, Mark Knapp and Edgar Giffenig will raise the bar in strength and conditioning. From June 21 to June 26, Knapp and Giffenig will co-direct the Summer Institute for Sport (SiS), a program designed for elite athletes that will emphasize a European approach to athletic development. The goal of the institute, Knapp said, is to teach athletes “what you need to do to become an elite athlete” and to “develop a sound, strong and powerful endurance base which will allow them to perform better in their sport and avoid injury.”Serious athletes age 16 and older will have the opportunity to learn how to train, regardless of which sport they pursue.“There is too much sport-specific training,” Knapp said. “Sport-specific training in the gym is a misnomer and misunderstood. If you ask the best trainers in the world, they will tell you that sport-specific training is what you do on the field or court, taken you practice your sport.”The SiS program has three parts. First, participants will go through initial evaluations and training sessions to enhance their speed, agility, strength, power and aerobic and anaerobic capacity. This portion of the program will be led by Rickard Nilsson, formerly a professional and Olympic weightlifter and currently the strength and conditioning coach for the Swedish Olympic committee. Second, SiS will teach the athletes the importance of mental preparation and the principles of high performance. Knapp and Giffenig have recruited Cornelia Cannon Holden for this role, the founder and CEO of the Mindful Warrior and a staff member on the United States Olympic women’s hockey team. Finally, Nancy Rodriguez, the director of sports nutrition at the University of Connecticut, will concentrate on the importance of proper nutritional habits for the elite athlete. The staff also features Tomas Strandberg, who played hockey for the Swedish national team, and American Jenny Potter, owner of four Olympic medals and one of the most distinguished female hockey players in the world.The methods Knapp and his team will utilize follow Sweden’s developmental system, an approach that honors technique and progression of each individual.The cost of the program is $1,497 for room and board or $1,327 for non-boarders. Each package includes three meals a day and evening activities.SiS will also hold a two-and-a-half day coaches symposium that will include lectures, small group work and observation of training sessions. Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, Conradi Eminent Scholar at Florida State University, will be the keynote speaker. Rodriguez, Holden and Nilsson also will speak. The coaches symposium will be held from June 24 to 26. The cost is $395.Visit summerinstituteforsport.com for more information.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less