Traditions
- The House System
Each student is assigned to one of four Houses named for figures in the school’s history: Alban House, named for Fr. Alban Boultwood, the first Abbot of St. Anselm’s Abbey; Austin House, named for Fr. Austin McNamee, the school’s founding Headmaster; Main House, named for Fr. John Main, the school’s fifth Headmaster; and Moore House, named for Fr. Thomas Verner Moore, founder of the monastery and school. The four houses compete each year for the House Championship, based on their performance in intramural athletics and their participation in extracurricular and community service activities.
- St. Anselm’s Invitational Basketball Tournament
Each year, St. Anselm’s Abbey School hosts to the Washington region’s longest-running interscholastic basketball tournament, the St. Anselm’s Invitational. The tournament was established in 1948. The post-season tournament traditionally begins on a Friday afternoon in late February, when the entire student body, faculty and staff join parents, friends and alumni in the gym to cheer on the varsity Panthers. The three-day event concludes on Sunday evening with the championship game, and the winning team’s name is inscribed on the Dwyer Trophy (named after the tournament’s founding coach), which is held by the winning school until the following tournament.
- Egg Drop
Each spring, Form IV students must complete a unique assignment as part of their Physics class: construct a vessel which, when dropped from the roof of the athletics complex, can hold an egg and keep it from breaking while hitting a target area on the sidewalk below. Students must construct their entries using only a single predetermined material, which changes each year and is revealed less than a month before the Egg Drop. The vehicle is graded on its size and dimensions, as well as its ability to keep the egg safe and intact. The student with the fewest deductions is named the winner of the “Egg Drop Award”—and, receives a perfect score on his assignment.
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Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“But generally speaking philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)