St. Timothy's School

St. Timothy's School
Address
8400 Greenspring Avenue
Stevenson, Maryland, 21153
United States
Coordinates 39°24′27″N 76°41′10″W / 39.40750°N 76.68611°W / 39.40750; -76.68611Coordinates: 39°24′27″N 76°41′10″W / 39.40750°N 76.68611°W / 39.40750; -76.68611
Information
Type Private girls' boarding school
Established 1882
Head of school Randy S. Stevens
Faculty 44 teachers and staff
Grades 9–12
Enrollment 200 students
Campus size 111.9 acres (0.453 km2) [1]
Color(s) Carolina blue and White          
Website www.stt.org

St. Timothy's School is a four-year private all-girls boarding high school in Stevenson in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The school is located just north of Baltimore City in Baltimore County less than a mile north of I-695, the Baltimore Beltway.

About the School

The school is a boarding school for girls and is run under the guidance of the Episcopal Church. The school promotes building young women to achieve their full potential. The motto of the school is "Vérité Sans Peur", which, translated from the original French, means "Truth Without Fear".

St. Timothy’s offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program.[2] The IB program is a demanding pre-university course of study that is completed in the span of two years. The IB diploma is geared towards highly motivated students aged 16 to 19. An IB diploma opens a window of opportunities. Leading universities around the world recognize this diploma. In some instances students can earn college credit for courses taken in high school. It is at the discretion of a university to accept any or all of the IB credits a student has earned.

Traditions

At St. Timothy's, basketball dates to 1896. Co-headmistresses (and sisters) Polly and Sally Carter were looking for an activity to keep boarders busy during the Thanksgiving break. They divided up the girls into two teams—named "Brownie" (after Palmer Cox's popular book series about the Brownies) and "Spider" (after the University of Richmond's mascot, where the Carter sisters' father attended) -- and the court into three areas, such that three forwards and three guards from each team covered the opposite ends while three centers roamed the middle. The Brownie vs. Spider game became a lasting tradition, and for over 100 years girls have continued to don 19th-century tunics and play by the old-school rules. Beyond the basic rules, almost everything about the intra-school game—from the selection of the players to the cheers, songs, and ceremonial dinners—is shrouded in secrecy.

Oldest Women's Basketball Rivalry

This game is more famously known as the oldest ongoing basketball competition between women's schools - St. Timothy's School and the Bryn Mawr School have held a game each year since 1901. As for the St. Timothy's/Bryn Mawr rivalry, credit goes to Edith Hamilton, the latter school's first formally appointed headmistress (hired in 1896, she ran the school for 26 years) and author of the definitive textbook Mythology. Hamilton arranged for the first game to be played between the two schools, on Nov. 25, 1901 on an outdoor "field" at the Garrett Estate in Catonsville, home of the family of Bryn Mawr co-founder Elizabeth Garrett.

According to the Bryn Mawrtyr's account, the grounds were wet (sawdust was scattered in a vain attempt to dry the playing surface), and twice steady rain threatened to postpone the game. The goal had no backboard, the ball was made of leather, and the girls were uniformed in long, heavy corduroy skirts, wool blouses, high-collared dickeys, and heavy black stockings. Boys were not admitted, and a tiny black kitten named "Satan" served as Bryn Mawr's mascot, prancing about in a white sweater embossed with bms. Soggy and primitive as the conditions sound, the school newspaper described the match as an exhilarating display of athletic prowess. "Our players . . . were at first somewhat demoralized by the splendid guarding of their opponents and rather lost control of the play," the December 1901 edition reads. "The first goal was a very pretty long distance throw made by Mary Brady, and of course greatly encouraged our team."

Bryn Mawr won the nail-biter 8-7—a score one would see after a few minutes of today's game, but understandable given the sawdust surface, boardless basket, and neck-to-toe uniforms. Afterward the girls gathered for tea and Kossuth cake, a chocolate-covered spongelike delicacy named after Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian general who visited Baltimore in the late 1800s, after a life of freedom-fighting that led to his country's independence in 1849. (There is also a street in Highlandtown named after Kossuth.) Like the game itself, the post-game festivities have endured, and to this day the girls covet the same engraved silver cup Bryn Mawr took home in 1901. The tradition of presenting a game ball to the winning squad, however, went by the wayside during World War II, when materials such as leather were being conserved.

But "The Game," as it's come to be known among students at both schools, hasn't endured without major challenges over the years. In the years after its invention, basketball was widely considered too barbaric for females. On the heels of a 1907 Illinois High School Athletic Association report decrying the sport as "unladylike" ("[T]he costumes are too circusy for girls, and . . . the record of blackened eyes, scratched countenances, and bruised limbs . . . is an argument against the game as far as the lassies are concerned"), girls' basketball was banned in that state, and schools nationwide followed suit. But St. Timothy's and Bryn Mawr played on, determined not to deprive their young women of an activity available to their male counterparts. (Illinois eventually came around, lifting its ban in 1910.)

Since winning the inaugural game, Bryn Mawr has maintained the advantage, leading the series 53-43 (with three ties)--thanks, in part, to the fact that for the first 20 or so years of the rivalry St. Tim's didn't have a gymnasium where its girls could practice. St. Timothy's did enjoy periods of dominance, winning throughout the World War II years and the early '60s. (Its most memorable victory was a 64-18 rout in 1951 that prompted Bryn Mawr players to issue an apology to their classmates.)

The Intra-school game has become a much bigger part of school life at St. Timothy's.

Sports

The school supports several sports programs including lacrosse, golf, tennis, dance, softball, field hockey, indoor soccer, volleyball, horse riding, ice hockey, soccer, squash and badminton. Additionally, students can complete their sports requirement through participation in the Duke of Edinburgh Award program, consisting of three medals: Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

The school competes in the Interscholastic Athletic Association (IAAM). In 2004-2005, the school won the Division C Championship in field hockey and basketball. In 2009-2010, the school also won the Division C Championship in Volleyball, and runners-up in Soccer and Lacrosse. In 2011, 2012 and 2014 the field hockey team won the Division C Championship.[3]

Notable alumnae

See also

References and notes

External links

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