High school and college athletes know the routine for photo day. Stand right here. Smile if you want. Click. Next.
But at Bates, that’s only half the game. Once a team has made their official portraits, the fun begins. It’s now time for the Bobcats to celebrate themselves and the team by making their own pose – a “sports dish”.
Over the past few years, pre-season sportsout sessions at Bates have become a favorite team building tradition. “The key to it all is enthusiasm,” says photographer Brewster Burns, who is a high school teacher in Maine during the day. “If I match their enthusiasm – which is not that hard to do – then my enthusiasm, their enthusiasm and everyone else in the room frees everyone to take chances and have a good time.”
“Enthusiasm” comes from a Greek word meaning to be possessed by a god. Except maybe in this case, the feeling is like being obsessed with their inner Bobcat.
Not everyone loves the camera, of course. “And if I mirror that restraint or nervousness, then that kind of snowballs, and everyone tightens up a little bit,” Burns says.
For her last Bates sportsout, Amanda Kaufmann ’22 from Somers, Conn., Was looking for a pose that captured a hunger for greatness. And she got it. “My favorite for four years,” she says.
Mohamed Diawara ’23 from Philadelphia wanted a position that would show the picture on a pendant he wears to honor a friend who died. Burns “ensured it worked,” Diawara says.
First-year Bates baseball players wanted to recreate a team image from 1879. “He was just as excited as we were and helped us make our replica as accurate as possible.”
“When people meet and they are all enthusiastic and they all feel good, then they free themselves, take more chances,” Burns says. “Creativity requires taking chances, both on my part and on their part. It’s a partnership. “
‘Why would I want to hide my strength?’
Competitive swimmers, both men and women, are known to develop broad shoulders and slender hips, explains Natalie Young ’24 from Windham, N.H. For a woman, it means having a body type, “that is more like the ‘ideal’ male body type.”
Young’s specialty is the butterfly, which “requires a great deal of upper body strength, more than other swimming events.” For Young, broad shoulders symbolize the countless hours of dedicated work that I have donated to this sport over the years. “The truth is, I have no shame in my wide ‘swimmer’s shoulders. See the article : USFL wins with football and fun, not politics. I see the female swimmer body type as my ideal body type. It’s literally something I wear as a badge of honor. Why should I want to hide my strength?”
Young says her creative sports dress “reflects the pride I feel as a swimmer and conveys the confidence it has given me in my body type.” The position has a different purpose, she says: a bit of “intimidation for the competition.”
Why we do what we do
After the extinction of the 2020-21 sports season, Bates athletes, especially seniors, returned to the track, track, track and slopes in high gear. To see also : What would it take to bring an indoor sports complex to Fort Smith?.
Daphne James ’22 from Sausalito, California, wanted to showcase the excitement and energy that marked the reopening of the Bates sport, but also “something fun and silly, especially because skiing can be serious and intense. So this pose came to It says, ‘I’m here just to have fun and happy being a Bobcat!’
The bag is also a “good reminder of why we practice our sport and what got us here: love for our sport and for being a member of a team.”
Trashion Show
Yes, it does happen: vomiting after a really hard workout. As one scientific article notes, “Nausea and vomiting are relatively common symptoms in athletes. Read also : Ben Lucas Appointed General Manager for LEARFIELD’s Rams Sports Properties.” As Colby Stakun-Pickering ’23 of Wellesley, Mass. Puts it, “harder and harder training sometimes means a trip to the trash.”
During the sports track session for the indoor track team, Stakun-Pickering was on a loss for his creative pose. Then he spied on a trash can and decided to show another side of being the track athlete. What the viewer sees, he explains, “is what my teammates and coach can see when they gather me back to the track for more sprints.”
Home cookin’
Like other Bobcats, senior football players Ciaran Bardong of Manhasset, N.Y., Luke Protti of Amherst, Mass., And Charlie Cronin of South Portland, Maine, wanted to make something special for their last Bates sports treat.
“One of us suggested fake mustaches and we knew instinctively that chef hats and kitchen utensils were important additions,” Cronin says. “You could say we have Michelin stars.”
Yer a wizard, Mary!
On a scale of 1 to 10, we are 9 3/4 obsessed with this Harry Potter look served by women’s cross country runner Mary Richardson ’22 from Blue Hill, Maine. “I grew up reading Harry Potter and felt inspired to pay tribute to my senior year’s sports track,” she explains.
Richardson says her childhood was “really cunning” (as in creative, not wizarding). “My mom always made Halloween costumes for me and my sister, so we’ve always had coats and crazy hats lying around.” When she packed back to Bates last August, Richardson spied on a Gryffindor scarf that looked out of a trash can in her closet. Along with her glasses, the look was complete.
1879 to 2022
What looks like a solid posture of the first-year members of the baseball team is actually a brilliant tribute to a 143-year-old team photo taken at the beginning of Bate’s intercollegiate athletics.
“The old picture was found by a senior, Antonio Jareno, who suggested that the early years recreated it,” explains Josh Sherman ’25 from Lexington, Mass. The historical picture shows the baseball team in its seventh year of life, 1879.
The team at the time did not have an official coach – it would not until 1906. Instead, a student team leader helped run the club. Holding the bowler hat at the back left is the student leader, Harry Merrill, Class of 1880.
Merrill’s appearance in the 1879 picture suited Bates’ first year because it allowed them to include Sherman, the student leader of the modern team.
To increase the fun of sports races, Sherman and others say, is that Burns supports their creativity.
“The photographer was very excited about our desire to recreate the image as accurately as possible, so he helped us adjust our positioning and told us all where to aim our eyes so that our replica could be as accurate as we could do. that.”
‘Part of my heart’
For his first Bates sport two years ago, Mohamed Diawara ’23 from Philadelphia posed with outstretched arms while one hand held a football. “I celebrated my arrival at Bates,” he says.
Two years later, Diawara again chose to hold a football. But this time, he put his hands together and laid his head down so the viewer sees a different face: what is depicted on the chain he is wearing, his close friend and football teammate in high school who died of gun violence in 2017.
“I wear the necklace because I will always keep his love of the game and the legacy alive. It’s my way of knowing I carry him with me,” he says.
“I look away because it’s about his face, not mine. He’s part of my heart now. “
Queen for a day
This tribute to the cover of Queen II is in fact a tribute twice. A picture of Marlene Dietrich, taken during the filming of the 1932 Shanghai Express movie, was the inspiration for Queen’s cover photo, taken by Mick Rock.
Then came these four senior members from the men’s rowing team. At the top is Thomas Monahan from Louisville, Colo. Below from left are Xavier Fallone of Niskayuna, N.Y., William Corcoran of Chevy Chase, Md. and Jasper Tucker of New Canaan, Conn.
Tucker got the idea on the spot, Monahan explains. “The long black Under Armor tops we wear for our winter rows were perfect for posing.”
Beyond the gear, “it’s the spontaneity that makes it so amazing,” he says. “The hundreds of hours we train together produce an incredibly close-knit group of guys. This closeness and the comfort we have with each other is what makes Bates’ men rowing so special and these moments so frequent. “
All aboard
The juniors on the softball team were looking for a pose for their creative sports track, and landed on the idea of rowing and looking forward together.
From left Kama Boswell of Bellevue, Washington, Lindsey Kim of Palo Alto, California, Amanda Taylor of Fair Lawn, N.J., Katherine Merisotis of Coventry, Conn., And, keeping an eye out, Cassidy Musco of Walpole, Mass.
Winter rules
This is a go-to pose for lacrosse player Shelby Howard ’23 from Ashland, Mass. “I did this pose in my first year, and will most likely do it again as I am a growing senior.”
An alpine attitude and lacrosse sticks when ski poles make fun of Maine’s long winter. “Lacrosse is a spring sport, but in Maine it is also a winter sport since we start playing in February.” And winter can be hard to escape. “We also went to Chicago for our pre-season trip last year, where we played outdoors in snowy conditions, so I think this picture foreshadowed that.”
Band of Bobcats
Explaining the choice to pay homage to the iconic image of the flag hoisted on Iwo Jima, Liam Evans ’22 of Sauquoit, N.Y. the limits of a war metaphor.
“It’s not meant to glorify war or equate the toll the war takes,” Evans says. Instead, he and his other seniors wanted to “convey the demanding nature of athletics, the perseverance one needs to succeed, and the idea of individual achievement and collective triumph.” From left Garrett Evans (Liam’s brother), Liam, Paul Speliakos and co-captain Charlie Hansen.
“It’s about having a soldier’s mentality to succeed in athletics. Mental strength is just as important as physical preparation. ”
Seeing and running
A simple relay relay became an eye-opening prop for track sprinter and jumper Jeandodie Tangishaka ’25 from Goodyear, Ariz.
Although the relay is a simple piece of sports equipment, it has enormous significance. ” The handover is the most important part of any sprint relay, ”explains Tangishaka. “The quality of the relay exchange between two runners can determine success or failure.” You can have the four fastest runners in a relay and still do poorly. “Ideally, both runners should meet at full speed and avoid slowing down” during delivery.
Tangishak says he looked through the relay “to emphasize the importance of seeing and running as one with the relay to make the perfect exchange.”
Hunger for greatness
“I have always admired female athletes who pose so confidently and I wanted to emulate that,” explains Amanda Kaufman ’22 from Somers, Conn.
She refers to a short YouTube video of sprinter and hurdles runner Sydney McLaughlin, the world record holder in the 400-meter hurdles and an Olympic gold medalist in 2020. is fantastic.”
“We train hard, September to May. It’s a laugh. But the environment in practice every day, being surrounded by other hard-working women, really makes the grinding worth it. We make each other better, and we’re better together!”
“I think the facial expression that the photographer captured was a hunger for greatness, and that’s a reflection of the grittiness that we see in training every day.”
Fertile imaginations
Cross-country skiers rarely seem to be able to afford insider jokes, and such are good friends and roommates Eli Boesch Dining ’23 (left) from Concord, N.H. and Clem Taylor-Roth ’23 from Juneau, Alaska, found vignette on their grass irrigation.
“We think of Eli as our plant guy. His hat says ‘John Deere Golf,'” Taylor-Roth explains. “He works in the university greenhouse and is a graduate of environmental studies.”
“And Clem always has this distinctive water bottle, a massive hydro bottle,” says Boesch Dining.
Last fall’s photo sessions were held outdoors at the Ladd Library Arcade, so Boesch Dining grabbed a lot of grass nearby (“sustainably harvested,” notes Taylor-Roth). His friend held it while Boesch Dining watered.
Take care of the garden and see the results, they say. “Put to work, sleep well, hydrate, eat healthy, and set mileage: Your speed and success as a runner will grow.” says Boesch Dining.
Poised pose
The juniors on last year’s women’s basketball team chose this fierce and determined pose for their creative sports dress, taken on November 5, 2021, well before the start of their historic season.
It was a pose, but these Bobcats were hardly posers.
With big contributions from the four – from left, Meghan Graff from South Portland, Maine, Jenna Berens from Durham, Conn., Brianna Gadaleta from Chappaqua, N.Y. and Kayla Bridgeman of Brooklyn, N.Y. – the Bobcats won their first NESCAC title and then advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division III tournament.
The sport “brings our team’s competitiveness forward,” Graff says.
(Incidentally, the smoke was created by a misting device that Burns borrowed from a local electrician who uses it for HVAC testing.)
Supporter and competitor
This creative sports dress “shows our personalities very well,” says golfer Maddy Kwei ’25 from Pasadena, California. She holds the tee between her teeth while her friend and teammate Nerea Barranco Aramburu ’25 from Zarautz, Spain, takes the swing back. “We are each other’s supporters and competitors on the pitch, and that’s the best part.”
“We both love to laugh on the pitch and with our coaches and teammates,” she adds. “We are here to compete seriously, but also Bates golf would not be Bates golf without some smiles and fun.”
