Fifteen years on, Notre Dame thrives

By Sean Rooney on November 17, 2018.

Editor’s note: This week we’ve lined up a series of stories looking back at athletes who came through Medicine Hat’s Notre Dame Academy, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary.
For more names and photos see what Notre Dame’s been posting on Twitter using the hashtag #nda15. Here is Friday’s feature on Aleena Matthews, Thursday’s on Austin Schibler, Wednesday’s on Kale Kessy and Tuesday’s on Jesse Florkowski.

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srooney@medicinehatnews.com @MHNRooney

As a sea of students fills the main hallway at the end of another school day, a teacher stands in the middle, high-fiving as many of the kids as he can.

This is a guy who loves his job.

A few minutes later he smiles in front of a wall of photographs above a trophy case, both starting to fill up to the point you’ve got to ask “where are you going to move this to once it gets too big?”

“We don’t know yet, right now Rob McDonnell (another teacher) has kept this intact from year to year,” says Lon Bosch. “We’ll have to find another space.

“We’ll have volleyball games and parents will come in here, sit here and look. Former students will come back, they’re looking and laughing.”

To those who know the wall, it’s a familiar sight. It’s right outside of the gymnasium at Notre Dame Academy, celebrating its 15th anniversary this school year after opening in 2004.

On the surface it’s just another middle school in Medicine Hat, albeit newer than most and attached to the South Ridge YMCA. But the wall and trophy case hint at more.

The photos aren’t your typical graduating classes; they’re action photos with individual names and dates on them. Dozens of graduates who have gone on to compete at higher and higher levels.

There’s Michael Clarke, named the SJHL’s player of the week this week with the Humboldt Broncos. There’s pro darts player Dawson Murschell, now living in England. There’s Kennedy Werre, now a teacher herself after setting Alberta rebounding records playing basketball at Medicine Hat College.

Notre Dame, of course, opened with a different concept than most schools — to give extra sport-specific training alongside the regular course work.

So it is that Bosch, the vice principal, worries over busing students to ice times he’s had to book for the hockey academy, or to the golf course, soccer field or baseball diamond.

He loves looking at the photos as much as anybody else does.

“It’s a busy school, it’s like an anthill,” he says of the mass of students around him. “You’ve got to meet the craziness because they’re bringing it every day.

“We’re just a little piece of that whole process. In terms of what we do… the bones of it stays the same, new kids come through and they always excite you, you see where they end up.”

This week the News has featured four of those athletes: golfer Jesse Florkowski, hockey player Kale Kessy, baseball player Austin Schibler and soccer player Aleena Matthews. They came through in different years, played different sports, but all had fond memories of the school.

“The thing about a sports school, I think a lot of kids think ‘oh you’re just focusing on sport,'” says Florkowski, now one of the best one-armed golfers in the world. “They incorporated schoolwork, the focus was on having schoolwork done before sports.

“I think for the most part when I was there for the first year, they did a tremendous job doing the school and sports thing combined together.”

Things have changed a bit. There’s no longer a strict grades average to be met to stay in the sports academies. Instead, the pillars of academics, athletics and action are all considered.

“When we started this we used to put a grade to it, you had to have a65 per cent average,” says Bosch. “Then we realized some kids, academics weren’ttheir thing but they were trying as hard as they could. We said ‘youknow what, if you’re giving us that, that’s part of the action piece,we’re happy with that.’

“You try to manage that, monitor, make sure they’re following through. If not, sometimes we have to refocus them and get them caught up.”

The cost has also changed, largely due to outside factors. Ice time, for instance, isn’t as cheap as it was in 2004. Academy students pay $95 a month or $900 for the school year. Soccer wasn’t one of the academy options originally but players like Matthews have thrived because of it.

Partnerships with the college, Flaman Fitness, Sobey’s and the YMCA have brought in other benefits too. Bosch opens a nondescript door near the wall to reveal an entire weight room, the likes of which most sports organizations would drool over. That’s Flaman’s doing.

Overall, Bosch wouldn’t change much of how things have gone. Seeing more photos added to the wall give him and the rest of the staff endless pride.

But he’s careful not to heap expectations on the kids at the school now, either.

“For us it’s all skill-based, so we’re just here to compliment what their coaches are doing in the community,” says Bosch. “When we started out we were pushing pretty hard, then we realized we don’t want to overload them with too much.

“Ideally you want to keep them engaged in school and enjoying school through the power of sport.”

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