"Fork Union Military Academy Blog"

A Great Boarding School Teacher Nears Retirement: FUMA’s Fletcher Arritt

As a young teacher watching him coach, I knew Fork Union Military Academy’s Fletcher Arritt was good. I didn’t know how good. Twenty+ years later and thanks to Erik Brady’s USA Today article, “Outgoing Coach Molded Men for Four Decades,” and Phil Wall’s documentary work I’m in awe.

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National Football Signing Day: A (Very) Rough Boarding School Report

I’ve done this in past but never found it so difficult to find press and announcements of boarding school players signing football letters of intent.

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Boarding School Alumni in the 2012 Super Bowl

Always looking for boarding school alumni in big stages, I’ve found three players in Sunday’s Super Bowl. This list isn’t exhaustive. If I didn’t find someone, please add them to the comments.

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Football Signing Day: Boarding School Flavor

I can’t find a good, single list of boarding school players who signed today, but I found something close. ESPNBoston has a list of Massachusetts players scheduled to sign today. It lists high school and college with whom they’re signing. It’s missing some of the Western New England schools and looks like it might short [...]

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Fork Union’s NFL Alumni: A Long and Deep Roster

Many college athletics fans know some of the military boading schools for their prowess in preparing athletes for collegiate athletics and academics. Radio and television announcers enjoy tossing in a player’s background after the play. I know from my own boarding school experience that strong athletes have been a part of the boarding school equation [...]

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Fork Union Alum Anthony Castonzo Distinguishes Himself On and Off the Field

Anthony Costonzo gave up one sack last year- a play during the Boston College Eagles 31-13 loss to North Carolina. A consumate left tackle, Castonzo can beak down his technique and tell you exactly what he did wrong on the play: “I can run it over and over…I know exactly what I did. I stopped [...]

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A Few Athletic Stories to Close the Year

With graduation has provided a spate of stories about boarding school athletes and their achievements. Spanning basketball, football, and baseball- the affects, strengths, and lessons of a boarding education runs through the four pieces. The stories also cover some time and history covering the current status of athletes looking beyond their boarding schools and and [...]

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Dare I say the word – Military…

In my last post, Don’t Judge a Book…, I talked about how boarding schools are often judged improperly for a number of reasons.  During my travels the last couple of months, I met with a number of families who had similar thoughts.  Their misconceptions of boarding schools were initially keeping them from even considering the possibility.  The [...]

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onBoarding Schools Just Got a Little Bit Bigger!

Last year our readership grew immeasurably through the contributions of the Boarding School Mom, Marylou Marcus, Tom O’Dell and Leo Marshall. This year we’re thrilled to announce that the lineup gets even bigger by expanding our coverage with the addition of voices and views from members of the boarding school community. A fantastic stable of [...]

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Kevin Laue Signs with Manhattan College

We highlighted Mr. Laue, a Post-Graduate student at Fork Union Military Academy, in a post titled “Working to Overcome” back on January 5th and we’re delighted to see that he has earned a scholarship to play NCAA Division I basketball beginning in the fall at Manhattan College. “…After Laue was featured in The New York [...]

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Fork Union Military Academy Receives $10.1 Million Cash Donation

With it’s largest enrollment in years (approximately 500 students), Fork Union Military Academy is beginning construction on a new dormitory for upper school students. To be named Jacobson Hall in honor of Jerry and Laura Jacobson of Sugarcreek, Ohio, the  three-story building- almost 100,000 square feet- will have 250 two-man rooms and be almost double [...]

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Working to Overcome

Talk about perspective. Sports suffer from overuse as metaphor and insight into the model for life.  But, in this story, athletics is an end not the philosophy, thinking, or means and the latter three provide the crux of the story.   Kevin Laue plays basketball at Fork Union Military Academy. FUMA plays great basketball- teams [...]

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Fork Union Military Academy: Building an Online Community

We came across a school website that got us to stop and take a look the other day. The Fork Union Military Academy’s site makes the most use out of more web tools than  any school site that I’ve seen in recent memory. Beyond their embrace of web 2.0 technologies, we also like the fact [...]

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