A school grows up, learning books aren't enough

DEVENS -- Everyone calls everyone -- even the principal -- by their first name at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Devens.

The students in grades 7 to 12 get "assessments" rather than grades in classes with a student-teacher ratio of 10-to-1. They are encouraged to think for themselves rather than memorize facts.

"The kids really learn how to learn," said Art Stoumbelis, the school's library assistant and junior varsity girls' basketball coach, whose daughter was part of Parker's inaugural class.

But soon after the school opened in 1995, teachers and administrators learned a vital lesson from the students: Sports are important to an education, too.

"You work really, really hard founding a school and creating an academic program that you think fulfills what it should do so kids can learn," said principal Teri Schrader. "And the kids come in and they say, 'Yup, we agree. And also, are we going to have a soccer team?' "

The administrators' reply, said Schrader, was, "Well, sure. We don't want you to not have a soccer team. How do you make a soccer team?"

After a sluggish start and some skepticism from the administration, now -- more than a decade later -- sports is deeply ingrained in the unique school's culture, and about half of the students participate on at least one team. As senior athlete Pearl Jurist-Schoen said, "It's definitely not like, 'OK, let's go to the pep rally.' " But in Schrader's words, sports at Parker are "vital."

With few students -- and most of them middle-school students -- sports were pretty primitive the first two years at Parker. Or as Ben Benoit put it, "Stuff was really crazy."

"We weren't that well-developed," said Benoit, a Littleton native. "We weren't sure which direction we were going to go."

That is, until Benoit, then 25, was hired in the school's third year. Benoit, a former distance runner at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who now coaches cross country, girls' basketball, and track at Parker, quickly got the school associated with the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

But in addition to attracting interest from students, forming varsity teams from scratch, and trying to build programs that could compete, Benoit also had to convince the school's board of trustees and administrators that athletics had a valued place in the Parker experience.

Sports help "clear your mind," said senior basketball player Liz Gapinski, a Groton native. "It keeps you healthy, which is part of learning. And you learn so much about yourself and other people in your school and your team and how to work with other people."

The administrators eventually agreed, and soon Parker had a fast-growing athletic program -- one that now includes boys' and girls' soccer, cross country, basketball, and track and field, as well as baseball and softball in the spring.

"We realized that in order to be a great school," Schrader said, "we were going to learn how to have sports at our school."

Still, sports at Parker -- which cost $200 per student per season -- have their own brand. In the athletic department's mission statement, the goals of the teams are linked to the 10 principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a nationwide group of charter schools of which Parker is a member.

The Essential philosophy does not mention sports, but calls for such things as "personalizing depth over breadth" and "modeling democratic and equitable practices." For that reason, the middle school teams do not cut anyone, and the junior varsity squads provide playing time for everyone.

The philosophy also has a precept called "teacher as coach." Parker seems to have turned that around, and coaches at Parker are teachers, too.

"One thing we stress is everyone has a voice," Benoit said. "We believe in leadership, but at the same time, we encourage everyone to speak up. We don't care if you're a ninth-grader that's a shy kid. You grow up quickly in that environment."

Benoit's girls' basketball team also grew up quickly, and hasn't missed the state tournament in seven years of MIAA varsity play in Division 3. The team has gone 118-41 since its inception, and at 10-4 through last week, the Panthers had qualified for an eighth straight appearance.

The numbers are remarkable because Parker is among the smallest schools in the MIAA, with 200 students in grades 9 to 12, and 350 overall. Although the school can draw from 40 towns, there is no recruiting -- the long waiting list for students to get into Parker is decided by a lottery. Inexperienced eighth-graders are routinely part of varsity teams, and one would be hard pressed to find a student who came to Parker for the sports.

"That's a big reason that I was upset about coming here," said Jurist-Schoen, who plays on the girls' basketball and soccer teams. "If you're on a sports team, a lot of times for people, it's for fun. It's just something to do."

Jurist-Schoen is from Acton, and the Acton-Boxborough vaunted school system and dominant sports teams earn rave reviews. She winced when thinking about the possibility that she could have been a part of this year's A-B soccer team, which was among the best in the state. But her mother liked the academic ideas at Parker.

Sisters Tory and Rachael Pfenninger of Groton had similar qualms about coming to Parker, but were convinced by their parents.

All three have found not just winning, but an extra dimension of teamwork with the Parker basketball team that developed under Benoit about four years ago. "There's a dynamic with this team that I think just makes the whole athletic experience different," Jurist-Schoen said.

It all started when Stoumbelis's daughter, Alexis, scored the inaugural basket in the team's first game in the fall of 1999. After that, the team spent six years as an independent, scheduling whichever teams would agree to play, public schools from surrounding towns or smaller schools closer to Boston or Worcester.

Last winter, it helped form the seven-team Worcester County Athletic Conference, which includes other small schools, including a few charter schools, from the Worcester area. Since starting league play, Parker was 16-0 through last weekend against conference opponents, including 10-0 last season.

Based on its high-pressure, fast-break style of play, the team has gone 61-17 over the past three-plus seasons, and won a tournament game each year. This year, senior captain Amy Williamson leads the team with 12 points and 10 rebounds per game. Its next goal is tournament success -- it hopes to reach the Central Mass. Division 3 semifinals, somewhere it has never been.

There's no easy explanation for the team's success, but it seems to be a blend of extreme dedication, bizarrely close team chemistry (the girls call themselves a cult ), good coaching, and intelligence. Parker tends to attract elite students, and Benoit said that makes a big difference on the court.

"I think the girls that have played varsity basketball, at least in the last three or four years, have been really smart kids," Stoumbelis said. "They're very coachable. They work really, really hard. They're very well-conditioned. I think those have been the keys to their success."

"I feel like sports are a lot about your team and who you are together and how you play together," Rachael Pfenninger said. "I feel like that's a really big part in winning."

And students say the attitude and enthusiasm have spread to other teams, which look up to the girls. The boys' basketball team, which went 0-20 two years ago, turned it around and reached the tournament last year. The girls' soccer team went 15-2-1 in the regular season last fall, and many of the other teams -- like the 30-member cross-country squad -- have enjoyed similar success.

But those at Parker may be proudest of a different achievement -- that both the boys' and girls' basketball teams won MIAA statewide sportsmanship awards last year.

"I think the kind of school we are has also added this dimension of learning from mistakes and not really just looking at a season in terms of its wins and losses," Schrader said, "but in lessons learned."

Mike Lipka can be reached at mlipka@globe.com.