Thank You for Your Leadership
from Mary Carrasco, assistant head for external affairs
Some of Mercersburg’s most extraordinary donors are Torchbearers. Torchbearers are those individuals who have made a gift to the school for three or more consecutive years, or every year since graduation, or every year their child has been enrolled. These loyal alumni, parents, and friends ensure that the students of today and tomorrow are given every opportunity to succeed.

Torchbearers make it possible for new generations of students to come to Mercersburg and learn. This newsletter is just for you. We hope that you will find it interesting, timely, and most of all that it will underscore for you the value that you have already demonstrated of your leadership in this community. Let us know your thoughts; tell us about what interests you. We hope to feature individual Torchbearers in future issues so that you will come to know the extraordinary individuals, like you, who support Mercersburg.

Throughout his tenure, Mercersburg’s first headmaster, William Mann Irvine was motivated by a single all-consuming passion: to help young students fulfill their greatest potential. His passion found roots at Mercersburg, and through his vision and energy, Dr. Irvine created a school with a strong sense of community and a firm dedication to academic achievement.

For 35 years Dr. Irvine strove to ensure the development and perpetuity of his school, so that it would benefit the students under his care and the future generations of students yet to come. He shared his vision for Mercersburg with his friends, all with an earnestness and enthusiasm that astounded them and inspired them to share in his dream. Through his energy and commitment he built a community of support for his school and his students, enabling Mercersburg to grow not just in enrollment and faculty but in land and facilities as well.

Mercersburg is grateful for the philanthropic leadership of alumni, parents, and friends. Thank you for your generous support of the faculty and students who live, work, and learn here. You are the community of support that places Mercersburg among the top boarding schools in the country.

For more information about Torchbearers, please contact De-Enda Rotz, director of alumni and parent programs, at 717-328-6178.



In Germany, 'Football' Means Football
by Phil Kantaros

Curtis Feigt (left), Stephan Kreifels (r.) and Aidan Francois-Friis (c.) came from different cities in Germany to spend their upper-middler year at Mercersburg.  They share many similar interests, but perhaps the most intriguing is their love of football.  Not football as in soccer, as in ‘European football,’ but rather the full-padded, full-contact American gridiron game.  

Kreifels tells me with obvious pride that his 15-19 year old squad, the Düsseldorf Panther, is the best European club team, losing only one game, to the Paris Flash, during Stephan’s time there.  I figured, then, that Stephan must have been raised on a healthy diet of Brett Favre, Bill Belichik, Emmitt Smith and Cleveland’s Dawg Pound, but I was mistaken.  “The American NFL games were not broadcast on free TV,” Stephan told me.  Instead, his long affair with the game has its roots in the now-defunct NFL Europe league.  Stephan and his father often went to watch the Düsseldorf Rhine Fire, and by the time their hometown team grabbed the World Bowl in both ’98 and ’00, Stephan was hooked.  

Only tag football is played in Germany until the age of 15, so Kreifels jumped in.  But he itched to don the pads and did so as soon as he could.  I assumed that it must have been difficult for Kreifels to learn the mind-bending number of different plays and formations that form the core of American football but I was surprised by his response.  “Not at all.  In Germany, football is played all year long.  In the winter we worked on conditioning and football theory.  We had about 150 plays, and we studied them hard.”  In Düsseldorf, Kreifels played wide receiver, and he brings those talents and raw desire to the 2007 edition of Blue Storm football.  In addition, though, Kreifels is going to see a lot of time on defense at the outside linebacker position.  

Read more here....

National Achievement Scholars

Seniors Sijibomi Ibikunle (left) of Upper Marlboro, Maryland,  and Trenton Woodham (right) of Arlington, Texas, have been designated Semifinalists in the 44th annual National Achievement Scholarship competition.  The program, founded by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation in 1964, recognizes and supports outstanding  African-American students throughout the nation. The one-thousand-six-hundred  talented individuals will compete for approximately 800 scholarships worth over $2.5 million to be awarded next spring.

Summer Reading Seminars


This year’s summer readings addressed the global relationships and tensions at the center of world politics today. The Kite Runner, by Khaleed Hosseini, and The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart, both center on Afghanistan and examin the delicate connections and disconnects between individuals and nations. Small groups of students, led by faculty members, talked about what they liked in the narratives; what made them uncomfortable; about the politics of economics and the histories and landscapes of Middle Eastern nations. In a group led by Karl Muller, Muller asked students to consider, for example, their perceptions of violence, its appropriateness and scale: Is an Islamic “honor killing” more wrong than the use of American military force that might kill scores of civilians? How does a tribal society function? “It’s not simple,” he said.

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How can this newsletter better serve Mercersurg Torchbearers? Please submit your suggestions and comments to Pat Myers.

Convocation speaker, Karl Reisner shared lessons learned during his 36-year Mercersburg career as a history faculty member and head baseball coach. “Attitude counts for a lot,” he said. He also urged students to take risks and remember to laugh. “Sometimes we all can take ourselves a little too seriously,” he said. The service concluded with the singing of the Alma Mater and the hike to the steps of Main Hall to pose for the annual school photo.