Dan Lively joins us for a podcast on Systems for Athletic Success.

This week we feature Brad Soderberg, Assistant Coach of the UVA Men’s Basketball Team. He visited our Upper School two weeks ago to discuss success in character, faith, and athletics. He shares some of those thoughts with the HeightsCast community here.

Man is by nature made for movement. As a social-rational animal, he is not meant to live an angelic existence; his flourishing is embodied and, even more, it is familial.  Though we all know this intuitively, living a healthy life can be difficult in practice. Not only does personal experience tell us this, data suggests it: life expectancy in America is dropping. How is such a downward trend possible given the advances in medicine and technology? What humans have done since the dawn of time, and what they have stopped...

Lacrosse sticks, baseball mitts, and footballs are the first blossoms of spring at The Heights. They pop up long before the flowers, as the boys prepare for a season of activity. Each boy bears the tools of his art; some carry bags as big as themselves across the parking lot each morning. In the fall, classes stopped for a full day of flag football. On clan days, the boys engage in the School’s home-grown sports like thud and bull in-the-ring. All for sport. It is appropriate that sport has such...

In our school communities, we talk a great deal about moral and intellectual formation. But physical development, too, has an essential place in the whole-person, long-term vision of what our sons and students can become. Heights Athletic Director Dan Lively reminds us that the goals of athletic training don’t begin and end with high school sports. In fact, lifelong functional fitness is in service to every vocation. It ensures that we and our sons are capable of having a positive impact—on the world and in our families—for as many years...