As many of you know, I am a theater teacher for a high school in Wolfeboro. Every year we participate in a theater festival. It’s a state-wide competition where one school is eventually selected as the “state championships.” We’ve never won first place. However, every year I try to hatch a new and even more diabolical idea for a show that will win us the coveted trophy.

However, something happened this year. In dreaming up what we thought would be a festival winner, we made the decision to do a play based on real people in the real town of Candor, NY. Then, as things progressed, we were invited to take the show to them to perform. (Candor was eight hours away in upstate New York.) In order to do this we had to fund raise thousands - just to take the show to a place the students had never been, to perform it for people they have never met.

Suddenly, first place was starting to take second place to doing something nice for a whole lot of people. Then the final decision: As we looked at our calendar, the students we found that we had to choose between performing the show at the “championships”, or for the people of Candor, NY. We could not do both. I asked them, “Which do you want to do?” Without even a split second’s hesitation, they all chose to ditch the championships and perform it for the town.

Sportsmanship. It’s the fourth in the list of William Lawrence Camp ideals. We get hung up on forming a team that can win, that we often forget that the logical conclusion of team is not victory, but family; that the main component of team is not winning, but people. One can argue that this team departed from the traditional model of playing to win, to playing with heart, and playing with soul.

We leave in seven days for Candor, NY and I swear to you I have never been so anxious, so nervous, or so elated for a performance in my whole life.

See you in June.

- Scott "Goose" Giessler