In July and August, 200 boys and girls, ages 5-13, participated in Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp at Roxbury Latin. The School’s 117-acre campus includes more than 50 acres of beautiful, undisturbed forest, where campers – ninety-five percent of whom were from the City of Boston – explored and learned about the natural environment. When campers weren’t outside investigating vernal pools, picking blueberries, or exploring wooded trails, they created and played in the classrooms, art studio, theater, and gymnasium.

“The partnership is almost too good to be true,” says Elizabeth Carroll, an environmental science teacher at RL who helped spearhead the alliance. The School had been actively looking for ways to share its unique, urban forest resource with a broader community, and Mass Audubon wanted to reach a greater number of city kids via their Nature Center Camps. The two organizations’ philosophies about access to first-class educational programming, regardless of a family’s means, also overlapped perfectly. Mass Audubon’s sliding scale of camp tuition, based on household income, enabled seventy percent of campers to receive a significant camp scholarship this summer (almost half of campers paid $60 or less). At Roxbury Latin, where the admission process is need-blind, thirty-five percent of students receive financial aid, with an average grant of more than $22,000. 

“Starting a new camp at Roxbury Latin allowed hundreds of Boston children, with limited exposure to nature and forests, to start to fall in love with the outdoors,” says Erin Kelly, camp director at Mass Audubon’s Nature Center Camp at RL. “It gave them a summer filled with fun, hands-on and minds-on outdoor activities in a beautiful, natural setting—right here in the city.”

The Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp, which employed eight RL students, was one of several camps and clinics at Roxbury Latin this summer—including soccer, football, and basketball clinics, a classical studies camp, and STEM and biotech camps. 

Pete Cahill ’15 and neighborhood friends Ryan Sweeney and Timmy Galvin returned from college this summer to continue their flagship hockey tournament, “The Dot Pot,” in Dorchester’s Garvey Park. Last year’s tournament raised donations for cancer victim Carl Hosea, who died shortly after the gathering. In its second iteration, this summer’s event honored the family of Michael Baker, a police officer who died this past spring. With momentum fueling this admirable community cause, the trio of organizers hoped to raise upwards of $13,000 for the hockey competition, which occurred last weekend. Read more on “The Dot Pot,” which the Boston Globe has featured for the second consecutive summer.

This April, Stu McNay ’00 and sailing teammate Dave Hughes earned selection to the Rio 2016 US Olympic Sailing Team and are widely seen as medal contenders. Already a two-time Olympian and member of US Sailing Team Sperry, Stu will be competing in the Men’s 470 (dinghy) races beginning on 10 August. Congratulations, Stu, and best wishes from all of us at RL!link to Boston.com article and video.

RL Classics students took their studies to the open air in an exploration of the monuments of Ancient Greece over two weeks following the close of school. Led by department chair Jamie Morris-Kliment, the group covered a lot of ground.

Beginning with Athens and a meal overlooking the Athenian Agora, the boys took in Eleusis, Ismthia, and the ancient city of Corinth. Nemea, Mycene, and Tiryns followed, then Epidaurus and Olympia. While in Nafplio for two nights, some of the boys swam while others hiked up to the Venetian fort overlooking the city.

A major highlight in Olympia was a race the boys conducted in the original Olympic stadium (see video). Between visits to Olympia and the Oracle in Delphi they spent an afternoon on the beach of the Ionian Sea, surfing the waves and playing beach ball. Before returning home, they traveled to the Temple of Poseidon on the southern tip of Attica at Cape Sounion, and afterward swam in the Aegean Sea. See photos from the trip.

Rising senior Xander Boyd and two rising juniors, Jack Golden and Ben Lawlor, spent a glorious week in early July at Eton College as part of the prestigious Eton Choral Course, a program that brings together the best high school choristers in the UK. Joining a group of 16-18-year-olds, Jack, Xander, and Ben spent a concentrated week rehearsing for a performance that was broadcast live on BBC on July 13. The three boys were nominated by Headmaster Kerry Brennan to be among the first O’Connell Fellows, and as such they were afforded this extraordinary travel and study opportunity by special arrangement.Hear their performance of Choral Evensong, from the live BBC broadcast.