It’s easy to forget that teachers were in high school once, that they were teenagers once upon a time. They went to football games and homecoming. They were in the school musicals and played sports.

English teacher Matthew Blair played varsity lacrosse for two years at Dundalk High School.

“[Lacrosse] was a lot of fun. I made many new friends and a lot of good memories,” Blair said. “My most memorable experience was definitely my last game in my senior year of high school when my team had a fight with Randallstown.”

Health teacher, physical education teacher, and badminton coach Tess Gauthier played field hockey and lacrosse for four years at JC.

During her freshman and sophomore years, she was on JV for both sports, but moved onto varsity junior and senior year for both sports.

One of Gauthier’s memories is of the grueling practices the players had to go through. When she was a part of the JV lacrosse team, the varsity team lost its game and the members had to run 600 meters around the track.

From her years of playing high school sports, playing the actual sport isn’t what Gauthier remembers most. “I remember being a part of a team,” she said.

Gauthier believes that being an athlete in high school and college has helped her to be a better coach. “I was able to look at the positives and negatives of my coaches and fine tune them while also bringing my own personality,” she said.

Being an athlete has helped her in more ways than one. “I think being a competitor makes you tough at all the things in your life, [like] financing, health, whatever things you need strength to overcome,” Gauthier said.

For social studies teacher Brian Powell, playing a sport has taught him “dedication to anything, whether it’s art or music or sports. I think there’s an element in performance in everything we do.”

During Powell’s freshman and sophomore years at Joppatowne High School, he played varsity soccer both years. After transferring to Calvert Hall College High School, he continued his soccer career by playing on the varsity team for both junior and senior year, where he was a starter.

His team won MIAA championships during his junior and senior years. “Back-to-back championships in the MIAA, it was not unheard of, but really difficult to be champions twice in a row,” Powell said.

Along with his memories of MIAA championships was playing against Curley High School at University of Maryland Baltimore County.

“My greatest soccer memory is playing in my junior championship under the lights against Curley at UMBC. There were thousands of people there. There were more people at my high school championship my junior year than any game I ever played in at college,” he said. “Playing in front of the Curley and CHC fans, it felt like I was playing in front of all of the Baltimore soccer [community]. It was awesome.”

In high school at JC, Associate Director of Enrollment Ed Maynard played varsity soccer for all four years, JV lacrosse during his sophomore year, and varsity swimming and diving during his sophomore and junior year.

“[Being an athlete] has taught me the importance of achieving a goal as a team along with the importance of hard work and preparation,” Maynard said.

Along with the other teaches, Vice Principal Gary Scholl also pursued an athletic career during high school. For all four years, Scholl wrestled for varsity and played varsity tennis at Bel Air High School.

“I was captain of wrestling and tennis. We had great teams,” he said.

“In wrestling, I wrestled a fellow from Brooklyn Park High School, Lloyd Keyser. He eventually went onto the Naval Academy and wrestled there. He became a world champion. I beat that kid in high school,” Scholl said.

With his hard work, Scholl learned about the importance of discipline. “Wrestling especially teaches a tremendous amount of discipline. It takes hours and hours of practice,” he said.

“For me, wrestling became a part of my career. I coached wrestling for 16 years,” Scholl said. “I learned to stay in good cardiovascular shape and how to stay strong.”

Sydney Setree is a Managing Editor for the Patriot and jcpatriot.com.