The Hill Academy Newsletter- May 17th, 2020

H.I.L.L. Message

We hope everyone is enjoying their Victoria Day long weekend! This weekend is always bittersweet for the Hill family as we remember Jamieson Kuhlmann, the former student-athlete who tragically passed away 12 years ago. As a member of the first ever Hill lacrosse team, Jamieson's legacy has had a large and special impact on the culture of the school and lacrosse program. Every day the students say his number, "45" in their daily cheer and the lacrosse programs honour work ethic and grit by handing out the "45" pinnie. These traditions are important to both honour Jamieson's legacy on the school as well as empower the students with the opportunity to create their own impactful legacy. 

With just over four weeks left of this school year, what is your legacy going to be at the Hill?

Life at the Hill and Upcoming Events

Athletic Gala: Save the Date

We know that our students and their families - particularly the 2020 graduates - are affected greatly by the circumstances affecting their end-of-year. With that in mind, The Hill Academy will be celebrating this year's Athletic Gala in a Virtual event. 

Save the date - Thursday, June 18th 6pm-8pm The Hill Academy will be hosting a YouTube Live gala event to celebrate the athletic and academic accomplishments of our student athletes.

Handbook updates

Please note that there have been some updates made to the Hill Academy Student Handbook 2019-2020 to reflect the impact of COVID-19. This includes an updated version of the calendar. 

Please visit the handbook here. 

Tuesday Assembly Coach Noble will be running a Tuesday morning assembly at 9:00am via Instagram Live. All students are expected to tune in to the @thehillacademy1845 instagram account at 9:00am for the weekly message, journal entry and challenge.

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Hill Lacrosse and Hockey

Hill Lacrosse and Hockey.

With the weather starting to break, hopefully everyone is able to experience more time outside. We continue to be very proud of the work that the students are putting in despite all the challenges. It may be hard to see now, but we know there will be a lot of good that emerges from this difficult time. Weekly review: -Kristen Kjellman, 2 time Tewaaraton winner, 3 time NCAA champion, 4 time All American at Northwestern, Gold Medalist for Team USA and one of the game's great players joined our girls lacrosse team to reflect on her career, and discuss the importance of staying true to yourself in positions of leadership. -Renowned skills coach Tim Turk joined our hockey program, taking the players through a variety of shooting drills and broke down NHL players like Brendan Gallagher's shooting mechanics. -Long time NHL player and Team Canada Member (including 1998 Nagano Olympics) Rob Zamuner joined us on Instagram live.  A consummate professional in his career, Rob discussed his humble beginnings in the game and how he was able to carve out an understated, but valuable role throughout his long NHL career. He also had some cool stories, like seeing Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic working out during their off day at the Olympics -Legendary lacrosse coach and player Tony Resch joined our boys lacrosse program. Coach Resch was an All American player at Yale, Gold Medalist for Team USA (as a player and coach), multiple NLL champion as a player and coach, multiple MLL championships as a coach, and current coach for the Archers in the PLL. We discussed some common characteristics of winning teams, what he values in a high school student athlete, the recruiting process, the role of the parent, and highlighted some of the great players he has coached over the years. Two areas he has always appreciated as a coach are coach-ability and competitiveness.   We added some additional Zoom practices and some optional speciality training throughout the week and weekends. We hope that our students are feeling challenged and well supported. Have a great holiday weekend!

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Hill Performance It was a great week of programming for our students and they continue to embrace the challenges of this new learning style. We continued our Live Workout Wednesdays and our optional specialized training sessions throughout the week for students who want extra work on their strength, speed and agility, or power and explosiveness. 

Coach Noble's message on Monday spoke to the idea of preparation during this time. He used the analogy of two farmers whose farms were going through a drought. One simply sat around and waited for the drought to end, while the other picked the weeds, turned the soil daily in order to be best prepared for when the drought ends. This message parallels our philosophy toward training and preparation. Regardless of when sport comes back, we encourage our athletes to "pick the weeds and turn the soil" daily to ensure that they are ready for any opportunity presented to them. 

With that, students are to complete a self-reflection this week regarding the talk on Instagram live. Reflection and prompting questions are found on each student's google classroom. Students are also responsible for running self-testing over the next week with their assigned groups and submit data and a highlight video. Students are to have assigned responsibilities this week and responsibility lists should be submitted no later than Sunday evening.  

Finally, we are continuing to offer our offseason training program through Zoom sessions. If your son/daughter would like to join our offseason training groups, please reach out to either Coach Noble or Coach Glisic in order to find out more information!