University School is a private all-boys, day school located near the city of Cleveland, Ohio. The school has two campuses, the Lower School located in Shaker Heights, which serves grades K through 8, and the Upper School in Hunting Valley, for grades 9 through 12. The school's historic athletic and academic rivals are Hawken School, Western Reserve Academy, Shaker Heights Public School and Gilmour Academy in nearby Gates Mills, Ohio, and its sister schools are Hathaway Brown School and Laurel School. The school is commonly referred to as US, and its main focus is as a preparatory academy; it prides itself on its perfect college matriculation percentage. University School is a founding member of the Cleveland Council of Independent Schools.

History and headmasters

The school was established in 1890 by Headmaster Newton Anderson, (1890–1900), who deplored the practice of sending boys away from home for the purely classical education of an Eastern boarding school. The school's first building was erected on ten acres at the corner of Hough Avenue and East 71st Street. Headmaster George D. Pettee (1900–1908) — notable for leading the entire student body to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo — first suggested the idea of moving the school to what later became the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. The school mascot is Prescot the Prepper.

Publications

University School publishes several publications. Most notable is the monthly school newspaper, The US News, which has been published for over a century and is actually older than the more well-known U.S. News and World Report.

Another popular publication is the annual Record, the school's literary publication. Students may contribute their best work (done in or outside of school) in poetry, short stories, photography, and more recently, drawing. Faculty members infrequently host a Writing Forum, where students can meet after school to work on their writing and discuss each other's work.

The Upper School's yearbook, The Mabian, has been published every year since 1919, and is nearly entirely student run. The first three letters of the name "Mabian" come from the school's colors, Maroon And Black, and "...ian" means "of the" - "of the maroon and black." The Tower is the Lower School's counterpart.

Disciplinary policies

US's Upper School has a demerit based system for disciplinary action: any faculty member may give a student one or more demerits for misbehavior. After a student has accrued five demerits, he receives a detention. The number of demerits a student has continues to accumulate, and twenty demerits is grounds for a suspension. Being late to school is customarily one demerit, and skipping a class is five. For conduct deemed especially unacceptable, teachers may issue immediate detentions.

For severe matters, the school will deliberate punishments with the Student Disciplinary Committee. The S.D.C. is a board of faculty members and two responsible students, as well as a senior head, from each grade who speak to the offending student and consider what disciplinary action should be recommended. The board's recommendations are referred to the headmaster who ultimately makes the final decision on disciplinary actions. Occasionally this will result in expulsion.

In the Lower School, there is a merit and reminder system that begins in third grade. Merits are rewarded to a boy who has done something above and beyond what is expected of him; reminders are equivalent to demerits, and boys who earn three or more reminders in a week must serve a detention the day that they receive the third reminder. However, each boy receives a "clean slate" at the start of a new week. Marks are recorded (as "M"s and "R"s) in students' assignment notebooks, and boys with exceptional numbers of merits are rewarded annually.

House system

In the 1990s, University School began observing a House System — a tradition historically associated with boarding schools. Each student belongs to a House that integrates students from kindergarten through grade twelve. At the Upper School, Houses are composed of roughly 40 students with even numbers of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. In the Lower School, boys are assigned buddies with whom they participate in many activities. Most faculty belong to Houses as well, and upcoming freshman students are assigned an individual faculty sponsor who belongs to the same House.

Houses are organized to encourage greater interaction between students, especially students in different grades. As such, the system is a large part of student life: House meetings occur weekly at the Upper School, in which faculty and students may plan activities and community service projects such as the annual Thanksgiving food drive. Each House elects a prefect from the senior class who acts as the House's leader. Upper School freshman, sophomores, and juniors are required to sit with members of their House during lunch as well, but seniors may eat separately in the cafeteria, or off-campus.

House rivalry is commonplace, however both the Upper and Lower Schools do observe a traditional school sports day called Founder's Day, in which students have an inter-house sporting competition with the aim of winning the House Cup. Founder's Day often takes place in the early fall, and activities include Ultimate, tug of war and soccer.

Houses are typically named after former Headmasters or notable alumni, and each House has a color to represent it. The numbers, names and colors of Houses over the years have changed, but the current House names are Anderson (maroon), Cruikshank (white), Goodwillie (dark blue), Hawley (purple), McCarraher (orange), McKinley (light blue), Peters (red), Pettee (black), Pickands (green) and Sanders (yellow). Hawley House was formerly Brown House (with the color brown) until Dr. Richard Hawley retired in 2005.

Athletics

The school's athletic teams are known as the Preppers. US fields varsity teams in twelve sports, four per athletic season: football, soccer, cross country and golf in the fall, ice hockey, wrestling, swimming, and basketball in the winter, and in the spring, lacrosse, tennis, track and field, and baseball. The varsity football team is one of the top five most successful football programs in Northeast Ohio, while the varsity hockey and lacrosse teams are almost always state champion caliber. Varsity wrestling and Varsity swimming both produce many state, sometimes national caliber wrestlers and swimmers as well. In 2003, the William S. Kilroy (Class of 1943) Field House was added to the Hunting Valley campus.The multi-purpose indoor practice facility features two basketball courts, three squash courts, a 200-meter cantilevered indoor track and practice areas for track events.

Beginning in the fall of 2009 University School will compete in the Premier Athletic Conference (PAC). The PAC is an 8-team conference including such schools as Willoughby South and Eastlake North high schools. The cross country, wrestling, basketball, track and field and baseball teams will compete in this conference in 2009. Football will begin it's PAC schedule in the fall of 2011 due to scheduling conflicts in 2009 and 2010.

The complex also includes a fitness center equipped with weight training and aerobic equipment. In addition, the Field House houses wrestling rooms, a gymnasium and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool with a separate diving well. Outdoor sports facilities include a football stadium, an all-weather track, four soccer fields, 2 other practice fields, a football field, two baseball diamonds, and seven all-weather tennis courts. These outdoor facilities are spread over the Hunting Valley campus.

The mascot is Prescott the Prepper, which was constructed by an acquired "Bob's Big Boy" head in 1998 coupled with a classic University School tie and blue blazer. It was supposedly stolen in 2006 by a graduated alumnus. However, it was returned in 2007.

US has a long, bitter rivalries with Hawken School, located in Gates Mills, Ohio as well as Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills, Ohio.

Ohio High School Athletic Association State Championships

• Boys Golf: 1990, 2003, 2006, 2007
• Hockey: 2003

Other State Championships

• Tennis: 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2005
• Lacrosse: 1999, 2008

Notable graduates

• Chuck Seelbach, former Major League Baseball pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, class of 1966.
• Henry L. Meyer III, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Key Bank, class of 1968.
• John Bell, lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the southern rock band Widespread Panic, class of 1980.
• Michael Seelbach, male lead in the Chicago production of the musical Wicked, class of 1995.
• Chris Rose, host of the popular sports program The Best Damn Sports Show Period, class of 1989.
• Jeff Terrell, current Dallas Cowboys quarterback, and 2006 Asa S. Bushnell Cup winner, as Ivy League Player of the year at Princeton, class of 2003.
• Jason Garrett, former NFL quarterback and current Offensive Coordinator and assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys

External links

• Official website
• Upper School Intranet

References