Last week, the Athletics department administered a survey to gauge student satisfaction in both recreational and competitive sports. The survey is part of a comprehensive review meant to improve the athletic experience for students and faculty, according to Merrilee Mardon, Deputy Head of School.
The committee for the review is headed by Mardon and consists of numerous faculty members involved in athletics at Andover. Heidi Wall, Assistant Chair in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science and Head Coach of Girls Varsity Lacrosse, described the purpose behind the review and its timing.
“All of the [academic] departments have been going through a review over the last several years. In a similar fashion, we’re looking to do a broad overview of athletics and take stock of where we’re at as a department. [We want to] see where we’re doing well and where we might need to improve, and make sure that the experience for our students is a good one,” said Wall.
Among the topics covered by the athletics survey is the range of LIFE, or recreational sports offered at Andover. Jaewon Choi ’28, who has participated in LIFE sports for every term of his time at Andover, discussed potential areas for improvement in the program.
“We need greater support for our coaches. Due to changing Academy policies, and how many courses faculty should teach, there’s a greater pressure among instructors to stop coaching their LIFE sport because of the high number of campus commitments they have. Certain LIFE sports, even though they are very popular, there aren’t many seats in them. [They should] consider additional coaches or additional offerings of a particular LIFE sport,” said Jaewon.
Serafina Luk ’30, who is participating in Chamber Music as a sport this term, commented on the benefits of having sport offerings that do not fall under the typical image of athletics.
“I don’t enjoy sports that much, so that way of sports is pretty good. For people who are not that athletic, it’s a good activity for them to do that still gives them the physical benefits. It forces you to do something meaningful in a way… I don’t think LIFE sports are useless or worse [than normal sports]. Even if some people are captains of [their] varsity team, they might still do LIFE sports because they want to try something new,” said Luk.
Mardon shared that an objective of the review is to provide an athletics experience that matches the needs of all students.
“Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different answer about what the school should do. For college recruitment, sometimes a club sport is more important than the Andover version. Sometimes, the opposite is true… So the purpose of the review is to see if we can’t come up with an answer,” said Mardon.
She continued, “Maybe it’s different sport by sport, given the realities are different sport by sport. But I know, for example, we have students on campus for whom the Andover experience isn’t exactly what they hoped for. They’re relying on their club experience. That can be really draining on a student.”
Melina Binieris ’30 shared that the ambiguity of the survey may have contributed to less transparency in responses. She offered alternatives for gathering student feedback on athletics at Andover.
“If [students] have a problem with something, they might not want to say it directly in a survey because they don’t want their information to be leaked or something bad happening because they say something negative. They might not feel like they want to express their problems,” said Binieris.
She continued, “[Another option could be] maybe having a conversation with [students] individually. Maybe the coach selects a few people, or someone selects a few people, and just asks, ‘How’s your experience going?’ Because I feel like in person, and not written down, that would make it better for people.”
Mardon explained the role of surveys in the review’s current stage, expanding on her plans for the Fall Term.
“[The committee is] doing self-study right now. We’ve been doing it actually since the spring. So the survey is just one way to get data. We’re going to have some open sessions for students towards the end of October and early November to do focus groups to get feedback that way. The survey itself was based on the structure of the review,” said Mardon. “The survey information is one part of a bigger data set that we’re collecting. We surveyed and interviewed coaches [last] spring. We did a lot of document collection. We surveyed students and families.”
