Annapolis, Md.—St. John’s College is a bookish, quirky place. Proud of it, too.
So it’s hardly surprising that the Johnnies, as students at this Great Books institution are known, take an unorthodox approach to sports: As my colleague Brock Read recounts in a lively dispatch this week, the college’s signature sporting event of the year is a colorful croquet match pitting the Johnnies against the Midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy, their neighbors just down the street.
Now in its 29th year, the event is an eccentric, extraordinary tailgate. Over the course of a day—this year, a sparkling, sun-dappled spring Saturday—Johnnies and Middies both current and former mingle with natives of this fun-loving waterside capital city, pretending to watch croquet while they parade about in Gatsby-era attire and swill champagne. Plenty of spectators, as we soon found out, lack ties to the college, the Academy, croquet, and, in quite a few cases, Annapolis itself. No matter; this “great, grand picnic,” as the college’s president puts it, has far more to do with camaraderie than croquet.
But the Johnnies don’t turn every sporting event into a cigar-scented lawn party. In fact, St. John’s, which is neither a member of the NCAA nor the NAIA, pretty much lacks a recognizable intercollegiate sports program altogether. Rowing, fencing, sailing, and, of course, croquet, are the varsity sports here. Ultimate Frisbee, volleyball, and soccer are among the club teams that make up its thriving intramural program. The combined athletics budget is around $150,000.
I learned all this from Leo Pickens, the college’s athletic director and a Johnnie himself (class of 1978). We talked while watching the college’s croquet team make quick work of the Midshipmen at this year’s Annapolis Cup. Croquet mallets swung just feet away as we wedged ourselves between picnic blankets littered with plastic champagne flutes, fancy cheeses, and, in one case, a Tupperware container of homemade crab cakes.
Don’t be fooled by the small budget, Pickens cautioned me. The Johnnies may be cerebral—after all, these young scholars learn ancient history from Herodotus and geometry straight from Euclid—but they’re hardly sedentary: Athletics is as much a part of a St. John’s education as the literary canon that so shapes its unique curriculum. “In the classroom,” he said, “they’re encouraged to be involved in learning just for the love of it. We imitate that on the playing field. We play just for the love of playing the sport.”
“It’s an opportunity,” he adds, “for the bookworms to rediscover their inner athlete.”
That’s an idyllic philosophy, for sure, and one that rarely triumphs in a climate that places a premium on ultracompetitive youth and college sports. But Pickens is adamant: College sports shouldn’t be limited to elite athletes. Or even, for that matter, to students who consider themselves athletic.
“They’re learning some valuable lessons that can only be learned on the playing field. So why restrict it to the most skilled?” he asks.
Croquet extravaganzas aside, playing sports just for the love of it doesn’t always make for quite the same fan experience as, say, a fast-paced Division I match-up. Pickens knows this.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, we don’t have spectators for anything,” he says. No matter. A Johnnie to the core, he offers an erudite response.
“The fewer the spectators,” Pickens says with satisfaction, “the purer the sport.”
Photos courtesy of St. John’s College
