Commonwealth has always had a reputation for athletics: specifically, that we’re not very good at them. There was something charmingly countercultural about embracing that identity, as many students and alumni/ae have. We’re nerds! We have our Plato and our problem sets. Let the other schools have their sports, and let our (nonexistent) football team remain undefeated. The joke in the 1980s: “Why did the Commonwealth student cross the road? For sports credit!” (Though that’s an unfair characterization; the ’70s and ’80s had solid fencing and squash programs, and a strong dance program under Jackie Curry.)

That reputation has held fast, even though the school has required athletic participation for more than forty years for all the reasons one would expect: camaraderie, leadership opportunities, general health and fitness, etc. Then, in yet another COVID-19 pandemic shift, Commonwealth saw not just an influx in applicants but a hunger amongst students (and families) for connection, including on the courts and fields.

Enter Jackson Elliott ’10, who returned to Commonwealth as our Director of Athletics and Wellness in January of 2022, bringing with him not just passion for sports and a deep familiarity with the school but a commitment to harnessing our recent growth to shape an athletics program that both speaks to student interests and stays true to our ethos. Jackson now coaches students as they face off against the same schools he played as a student athlete, amongst a host of other responsibilities. Keep reading as he and Head of School Jennifer Borman ’81 reflect on the evolution of Commonwealth athletics and moving toward their shared goal.

Jackson, what’s your typical day like as Director of Athletics and Wellness?

Jackson Elliott: A lot of it is about preparing for the next season, scheduling games and setting up coaches and facilities months in advance. That tends to be balanced with the miscellaneous things that come up day-to-day, like when a game gets rained out and needs to get rescheduled.

Jennifer Borman: You’re underselling the vast amount that falls in your purview! Finding all these facilities all over the city. Hiring and vetting our coaches. Talking to students to find out where their interests lie. Liaising with other schools and their teams. Coordinating transportation. Ordering uniforms. Not to mention teaching Health and Wellness to our ninth graders, interviewing for admissions, helping with lunch clean, and planning Hancock.

JE: (Laughing) Yeah, during the school day there just tends to be a lot of emailing and spreadsheets!

JB: Then in the afternoons we really get to reap the benefits of your work, once we get onto, let’s say, a soccer field and the game kicks off. Then it's just about the kids having fun. And you’re in the thick of it, including as a coach.

JE: Yes, I coach the Girls’ Varsity Soccer team in the fall, Boys’ Varsity Basketball in the winter, and the Ultimate Frisbee A Team in the spring. I love coaching. That’s probably the most fun part of the job. It is definitely busy, and it means a lot of travel, but it’s really rewarding, especially seeing students grow year over year and teams start to gel each season.

You also stepped into the role of Hancock Czar, planning every detail of this beloved tradition in recent years. How has the work colored the way you think about Hancock, and why are trips like this still relevant?

JE: As a student, you’re focused on what you’re looking forward to at Hancock, what activities you want to do with your friends, and it’s easy to forget everything that happens behind the scenes. I mean, Hancock is truly a full community-wide effort, and students do their assigned jobs, but now that I’m on the other side of it, I know how much all the adults have on their plates, whether they’re facilitating meals or organizing morning activities or sleep chaperoning. It’s really rewarding to see it all come together. It may be exhausting, but at the end we can step back and say, “We did it.”

As for why we do this, it’s one of the ways students can get closer to everyone, especially ninth graders during fall Hancock. It’s a time when you’re balancing new classes, teachers, and sports with trying to connect socially with people. Having four days to forget about schoolwork and do some fun activities and maybe commiserate if it’s raining: that’s where you can really make some deep and meaningful connections that can last for not just the rest of the year but your entire time at Commonwealth and beyond.

Enrollment in our team sports has increased by more than sixty percent over your tenure, Jackson, and, anecdotally, there seems to be more enthusiasm amongst players and fans alike. How has our athletics program evolved since you both were students?

JB: We do have a lot more participation, and I think that comes from a lot of things, but your ethos, Jackson, has been a big part of it. You can make an inference just looking at all the teams you coach and how they’ve grown.

I also wanted to reculture us a bit around sports. The Commonwealth of my era was often full of eye rolling and mordant self-deprecation about our poor sports performance, and, for some kids, that attitude became self-fulfilling. Today, we really are conscious—you, most particularly, Jackson— about saying, “Look, you don’t have to love sports, but it can be a wonderful experience; just give it a try.” You’ve really built a really supportive culture, and the numbers reflect that.

JE: Thanks! Yeah, we’re not trying to prepare our student athletes for playing competitively at, you know, an NCAA Division 1 school. The lower stakes mean everyone gets to play, which is not always the case at more “serious” sports schools or even in college. My senior year here, I played Ultimate Frisbee for the first time, and years later, it’s still one of my favorite sports. Students can start a lifelong relationship with a sport or fitness in general. It’s really about helping them find a positive environment and experience playing a team sport, because that’s just a great way to find community and joy in high school and beyond.

JB: I certainly see athletics strengthen the sense of community here in all kinds of ways. It’s an opportunity for wonderful cross-grade connection. That happens elsewhere at Commonwealth, too, but, on a team, ninth graders start to feel appreciated and have easy mentoring connections to older students. And the older students step into these leadership roles, and they have a great esprit de corps at recess announcements, where they’re shouting out each other’s goals or reminding the rest of us to go to games. Like you said, there’s a joyfulness and a sense of connection within and across teams.

JE: So, I played soccer and basketball all four years here, and my sophomore and junior years, I played baseball in the spring. I found a great group of people doing all of those sports, and that community would actually extend to things like chess club or acting in plays. It was a great way to meet people across grades. It’s also a way to connect beyond screens and relax, and I think both students and families are looking for that. Spectating a game is a chance to cheer on not just their student but their team.

What about those students who are looking for a more competitive athletic experience or who perhaps already have that long-standing interest in a sport?

JE: We do have some really high-level athletes who work with coaches outside of Commonwealth in addition to or instead of with us. I'm thinking of fencing, specifically, because we have a few fencers who compete in the Junior Olympic circuits and things like that. They put in a lot of hours each week, and we want to make sure they can continue to pursue those goals, and that’s why we have our independent sports option [wherein students get approval to continue working on an outside sport in lieu of a Commonwealth team]. We also try to find ways to celebrate their accomplishments in the community. We have a senior who’s a competitive sailor and made a national sailing tournament this fall, and we’re lucky to have a sailing team that he can participate in in the spring as well.

JB: We have a rower right now who was in the Head of the Charles, and we’ve had dancers who’ve pursued ballet and other forms of dance pretty seriously outside of Commonwealth. Every Commonwealth student does a lot of really careful time management, but those athletes in particular walk a razor-thin edge. It’s impressive.

JE: Those are the kind of pursuits, whether they’re academics or sports, where determination and discipline pays off, including in other areas of life.

Boston is our campus, including for sports; can you talk about the role the city plays in shaping the athletic experience at Commonwealth?

JB: It’s a gift and a constraint!

JE: Yes, exactly! There are a number of huge benefits to our location, and one is that we’re fairly central. That means there are lots of opportunities around the city we can take advantage of and that students can get to relatively easily. We sail on the Charles and climb at Rock Spot [in South Boston], and we use basketball courts at local universities, which can be really exciting, because they’re designed for high-level athletes. It also often means we play at multiple facilities, and students have to pay attention to their schedules and announcements, so they can keep track of all the different places.

JB: It is amazing to have the Esplanade as our backyard. Some sports, like cross country or Ultimate Frisbee or soccer, are a hop, skip, and a jump away. Some are farther afield, like fencing, and that really is a challenge. And some sports are held in the building: yoga, ballroom dance, Latin dance. When I was a student, we did Taekwondo in the library, which was really transformative for me!

JE: With fencing in particular, we want to be able to send a full team—about thirty fencers at a time—and there just are not that many studios with that kind of capacity.

Adding climbing as a winter sport was big for us, and we can send a lot of students to Rock Spot because they have the capacity. It’s been very popular; students even ask about it in admissions interviews. So we’ll see what the next rock-climbing “hit” is. I’m always looking at what else we could offer.

What are your hopes for the future of our athletics program?

JE: I want us to see how we can improve the player experience by providing leadership training for students who want to take on larger roles on teams and by adding more professional development for coaches, so they can better support the growing number of students participating in their sports.

In terms of our other offerings, we’ve overhauled the fitness program this year so students are getting individualized workout plans tailored to their goals, as opposed to everyone taking the same class. We’ll see how that goes. I’m excited about the potential.

I think the spring season can continue to be flexible, because it’s generally an optional season. We have Ultimate Frisbee, competitive sailing, Girls’ Volleyball, running club, and yoga. If there’s a high level of student interest in another sport, we can see if that’s a possibility. That’s what happened with Girls’ Volleyball [new as of 2024].

You both came back to us as alums; how does it feel working at the Commonwealth of today?

JE: In terms of athletics, it’s really interesting to coach against all of these schools I played as a student and doing so with the broader perspective of knowing what goes into all of these sports. It also helps me appreciate what Meagan Kane [the librarian and athletics director when Jackson was a student] was doing and all the other hurdles she faced back then: like, we did not have a home field for soccer, so we had to take a bus to Daly Field and bring our own nets; we had to jog to Magazine Beach [two miles away] for practices. So things have changed a lot since then, and I appreciate those hurdles a lot more now.

JB: I often observe and reflect on the fact that Commonwealth is an even better school than the one I went to. The things that were amazing and transformative and inspiring then still are, and there is so much more to offer students now. Forty years ago, I had some really fun athletics experiences: as I said, Taekwondo was amazing, and I laughed a lot with my friends about how completely inept I was on the basketball court. But there was certainly no such thing as an athletics director, and there really wasn’t a culture that embraced and supported athletics participation when I was a student. So it’s been a privilege to nurture both our traditional strengths and grow in other areas, and I think students—not every kid, but a whole lot of them—really like the opportunities they have in our athletics program.

This article originally appeared in the winter 2025 edition of CM, Commonwealth's alumni/ae magazine.

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