St. George's School, Vancouver - Review #1

I hold the record for fastest goal in League1 BC history. 11 seconds. We drew up the play on a whiteboard 10 minutes before kickoff, the grass was longer than we expected, my teammates adjusted on their own, and the ball ended up in the net. That goal would not have happened if St. George's had not given me the flexibility to train and play at a semi-pro level while still handling my classes. The school is in Dunbar on West 29th Avenue, 2 campuses 1 kilometer apart, boarders in Harker Hall on the Junior School side. I was a day student but I spent so much time on the Garcia and Mortensen fields that I might as well have had a locker in the changing rooms.

The best thing that happened to me at St. George's was the easy access to the Garcia field. That sounds ridiculous but it is true. I could walk out of class, cross the campus, and be on grass in 3 minutes. Alone if I wanted to be alone, with teammates if I wanted company. That field absorbed a lot of my stress. I would juggle a ball against an imaginary defender, take shots at an empty net, just run until my lungs burned. No coach watching. No parents in the stands. Just me and the white lines. That was the space where I figured things out.

I would have asked Coach Tweedle more questions about the game instead of just showing up and playing. He had knowledge I did not tap into because I was too busy rushing off to my next thing. I would have spent more time in the Learning Commons too. That library space was nice and I barely used it. Advice for someone new is this. Use the fields. Not just for practice. For the alone time. A school with that much green space in the middle of a city is rare. Do not waste it by staying inside.

What I liked most was that the school got out of my way. It gave me good fields, a flexible schedule, teachers who did not lecture me, and then it stepped back. That is a specific kind of support. Not hand holding. Just a solid foundation and the trust that you will build something on it yourself.

The Garcia field late afternoon when the shadows get long. Best time to train alone. The weight room is small but the equipment works. The walk between the Junior and Senior campuses takes about 7 minutes if you do not rush. Use those 7 minutes to clear your head before your next class. And if you play soccer, talk to Coach Tweedle. He knows more than you think.

Honours with distinction, above 90 percent overall. I took economics and commerce courses because I knew that was my direction. The Senior School campus has the Learning Commons library space where I spent a lot of hours between classes, plus the new buildings that opened with classrooms full of light and art studios and science labs. The teachers were solid. They did not punish me for being tired on Mondays after a weekend of games. They just asked if I needed an extension and moved on.

Semi-pro soccer is a different animal than high school sports. TSS Rovers played in the Canadian Championship and the level was serious. But St. George's has a strong athletics culture too. The school offers 16 competitive sports and over 40 teams. The fields are good, the weight room is decent, and the hockey teams practice at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre through a partnership with UBC. That partnership is the kind of thing you do not appreciate until you see how other schools operate. My soccer teammates from other programs were always complaining about their facilities. I never had to.

I did not do any of that. The Junior School has a beautiful chapel and the Senior School has an auditorium where theatre productions happen, but I never made it to a show. Too busy on the pitch or in the weight room.

The soccer program was my main extracurricular. The school encourages students to participate in athletics every day after class. I also did program coordination at Learning Buddies Network for a while, interviewing and training volunteers who tutored elementary school students. That taught me how to manage people who do not have to listen to you.

I went home every night. But I had buddies in Harker Hall, the boarding house on the Junior School campus that sits right on the grounds with the sports fields. I crashed on their couches enough times to know the building. The common room was fine. The boarding parents were fine. The international boarders I met there were from over 20 different countries and some of them had the wildest stories about adjusting to life in Vancouver. That was a window into a world I did not know existed.

The new Senior School campus has Princeps Hall, which serves as dining space for students every day and also hosts special events like graduation. It is meant to feel like a university campus dining hall, big and open and full of light. I ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches there not because they were good but because they were fast. Grab 2, eat 1 on the way to the table, finish the other while checking my phone, leave. Fuel.

Vancouver is my city. I grew up here. The Dunbar neighbourhood where St. George's sits is steps from Dunbar Street with its coffee shops and grocery stores and the little businesses that have been there forever. The Junior School campus has that iconic granite building that looks like it has been standing for 100 years because it basically has. Being close to UBC meant I could go from class to training to games without wasting hours in traffic. The location worked for me.

The school draws from the entire Lower Mainland and from over 20 countries overseas. That mix meant my teammates came from places I had never visited and my classmates had accents I had to lean in to understand. I did not have a huge friend group. A few close guys from the soccer team who understood that I was always busy and did not take it personally. The school motto is "Sine Timore Aut Favore" which is Latin for Without Fear or Favour. I never thought much about that until after I graduated. But the spirit of it, the idea that you do not need anyone's permission to be who you are, that was baked into the place.