[Carrie Anne]: I'm Jocelyn McCarthy and I'm here with the Mustang Report. I'm here with Bobby Maloney, who is the Athletic Director at Medford High School. What are some of the challenges as an Athletic Director?
[Robert Maloney]: Regular challenges every year are the budget. We're very fortunate that we have a superintendent, a mayor, and a school committee that supports athletics in our city. Inclement weather, challenging for fall sports and spring sports. We're very fortunate at Medford, we have some nice facilities and we have some nice turf fields, so we very rarely cancel anything. Bottom line is we want our student-athletes to have a positive experience up here. Very few people go professional, even go on to college and play, so we want our kids to have a great experience up here.
[Carrie Anne]: What is the process of hiring a new coach?
[Robert Maloney]: We accept interviews, we post it, we look for teachers first. It's nice to have a teacher in the building because they understand that it's an extension of the classroom. It's nice to have a Medford person involved, somebody who's come through the system. We've been very fortunate recently to hire some Medford coaches. John Skerry is a Medford kid. He just took over for boys basketball. He went to Tufts University. Rayanne Forbes is taking over for Dave McCarthy, who's decided to retire. She's a Medford kid who went to Northeastern University, so we're very fortunate to have some great Medford coaches here.
[Lydia Ryan]: Hi, I'm Lydia Ryan with the Mustang Report, and we're here in the Medford High School gym with John Skerry. Hi, Mr. Skerry. How are you doing today?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: I'm great. How are you?
[Lydia Ryan]: I'm good. So, Mr. Skerry, what is your role in Medford High School?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Well, I'm the new Boys Varsity basketball coach, and I'm also a member of the instructional support staff here at Medford High, and I'm also working towards my full teacher certification.
[Lydia Ryan]: That's awesome, I hope you get it. So, can you give us a background on your basketball play-in days?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Sure, well I'm born and raised in Medford. I grew up playing in this gym back in the MCE program back in the, I think the 80s. My high school playing days were at Malden Catholic and then I played at Tufts. I was captain of the varsity basketball team at Tufts and since then I've coached at Tufts. Also I coached at Suffolk University. Last year I was the assistant coach at Minuteman High School where we advanced to the Division III North quarterfinals.
[Lydia Ryan]: That's awesome. What are your goals for this year?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Well right now I'm just getting to know the kids. I see them in the hallway every day and I'm looking to build a program and that starts from the beginning. We have actually started, well we're continuing what's known as the Medford Fall Ball program which is a program for grades one through eight. We primarily have mostly first graders through sixth graders and that meets every Saturday and it's still open to the public so come on down and sign up if you haven't already and that's instructional. We're starting with basics. We don't get right into games right away. For the younger kids, we use a smaller basket and a smaller ball. So I want to try to build a program that involves kids who are years away from being in high school. In terms of for the kids that are here, it's school first. I want to make sure that they get their grades in order. And then basketball comes second. I tell all the kids that I see in the hall every day, family first, then school, then basketball. And that's something that we try to live by.
[Lydia Ryan]: That's a great way to live. Describe your off-season program and any programs specialized for the youth of Medford.
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Well, in terms of, like I just mentioned, the fall ball program for the younger kids, grades one through eight. For anyone who's in the high school now that's thinking about trying out, the first thing I would say is get in shape. If you think you're in shape, you're probably not. And if you know you're out of shape, you've got an uphill climb. In Massachusetts, tryouts don't start until the Monday after Thanksgiving, so you've got some time. But until then, it's just a matter of working on your own game, on your own time, and really getting your class stuff in order.
[Lydia Ryan]: So what is your philosophy on discipline?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Gotta have discipline. I don't have a lot of rules, but my main rule is to be on time. If you're late, you're not ready, you're distracting your teammates, you're distracting your classmates. So just building good habits. Like I said before, I don't have a hundred different rules, but be a good teammate, be a good student, be a good son, be a good brother, and just don't be late.
[Lydia Ryan]: How do you handle the tryout and cut process?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Well, we'll have, like I said, tryouts start the Monday after Thanksgiving. How many spots we're going to have per team, we'll see roughly 15, 16, 17. We'll have a freshman team, and then a junior varsity team, and then the varsity team. And that'll all start the Monday after Thanksgiving. So if you're a freshman that's good enough to play varsity, I'll put you on the varsity. If you're a junior or senior, you know, The spots are open to anybody. I'm brand new this year, so everyone has a clean slate. If you've tried out before and you haven't had success, come on back. And just because you were on the team in the past doesn't guarantee anything with me.
[Lydia Ryan]: Awesome. So what would you try to teach your players besides basketball, and how would you handle that?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: Well, from my own personal and professional experience, you know, basketball is a great teacher in life. So, you know, if I'm only teaching my players basketball, I'm not doing a very good job. At this level, it's my job and my staff's job to ideally get my players ready for college. Whether or not basketball is in their future, I need to get them ready for college. If they don't want to go to college, I have to help them get ready for the workforce. So basketball, you know, stuff that you do in the court, you know, being on time, following rules, those are all skills, life skills, that can transfer into the next phase of life, whether, like I said, whether it's college or the workforce or the military or taking a gap year or anything like that. So basketball can help prepare you for all of those things.
[Lydia Ryan]: Awesome. How has coaching affected your life?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: It's been great. All experiences that I've had in life, I can directly attribute to basketball. When I was at Tufts, I had an opportunity to go back to graduate school because of basketball, so I got my master's in education. All connections that I've made in life, although obviously I didn't go to the NBA, but My best friends are people that I've played with and I've coached with. So basketball is always the connections that you'll make now and the contacts that you make now, whether they be at the high school level or the college level, they will follow you for the rest of your life.
[Lydia Ryan]: What would you say to incoming freshmen who are trying out for the team?
[LRgDo3q--Pg_SPEAKER_09]: I'd say come on out. And I'd say make sure you're in shape. I can't give you a number of how many kids that we're going to keep, but Practice, work on your game now, work on your ball handling now. You know, you can be doing 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups every day. Get your body in shape. And just come try out. I'm gonna try to keep as many freshmen as we possibly can, because I don't want to turn anybody away.
[Lydia Ryan]: Thank you, Mr. Skerry. And I'm Lydia Ryan, signing off. Back to you.
[Carrie Anne]: I'm here with Mr. Glusi, the phys ed teacher. What are some of the challenges as a phys ed teacher?
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_10]: Some of the big challenges as phys ed teachers, we only see the kids two times every six days. So we're definitely making strides as far as, you know, a freshman, sophomore, phys ed, it's really fitness based. So we're trying to pass on good fitness habits and having them, like, learn how to take care of themselves. I would love to see them every day. So it's kind of tough, you know, because the way our schedule is, you throw a holiday or something in there, you may not see a kid for a full week.
[Carrie Anne]: What are some of the responsibilities as a phys ed teacher?
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_10]: We have a lot of responsibilities. We're in charge of the health habits for pretty much every kid in this school. You know, we see every student, which is great. I love the way we do it. Freshmen and sophomores start the year, juniors and seniors end the year. But we have a lot of responsibilities. As I said, you know, passing on healthy health habits and just making sure these kids know what they're doing, preparing them for life. We're trying to get them in the best shape possible, you know, so their future, so there's no health problems.
[Carrie Anne]: Do you have different curriculums for different grades?
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_10]: We do. Freshman physical education is called introduction to fitness. There's a lot of strength testing. We do time mile. We do the pacer test, push-up test, sit-up test, pull-up test. Sophomore phys ed is a little more comprehensive. It's called components of fitness, foundations of fitness, excuse me. Students are required to keep a binder. We used to do an actual paper binder, but this year we're trying to do digital downloads of all our documents. There's more anatomy, there's more body systems, it's way more in-depth.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, I'm Amber Harbison and I'm here at the science fair and I'm here with Leila. And what's your project? It's basically a way that we want to try and target a specific pathway involved in disease, and we do that with the molecules that we make. I think it's a very cool project because we really get to see a lot of different aspects of science. It's not just, you know, chemistry. It's very much an overlap of many different fields. We do a lot of kind of, you know, biotech engineering, a lot of synthesis, a lot of assays. And so it's great to see, like, you know, all fields come together. So it's fun.
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_03]: I'm Victoria Rashti here at the Reverse Science Fair, and I'm here with Mr. Wilson. How are you today, Mr. Wilson?
[SPEAKER_03]: Excellent. How are you?
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_03]: I'm great, thanks. So why did you decide to take your class to the Reverse Science Fair today?
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted them to get a chance to see what science really looks like. So all of these guys are actually in the middle of conducting research. Some of it could theoretically change the world. And some of this stuff is really cool. And get an opportunity to kind of look and see what that is like. And maybe inspire some of them to go beyond their just studying of biology or chemistry, but trying to think about how to apply it. And this is a wonderful example of that.
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_03]: What's one of the experiments that's your favorite here today?
[SPEAKER_03]: I've only seen a couple of them so far, but there's a couple that are really cool. There's over in one spot, there's a gentleman who is working to potentially mutate bacteria to produce an enzyme that people are actually missing in their body. So he talks about like lactose intolerance. People are lactose intolerant and missing an enzyme called lactase. He's looking at one that's similar to that. And with that, they would actually never have to, if they can get it to work, never have to take a pill to be able to do that. And in the particular case he's talking about, it's more severe in its side effects than lactose intolerance with the stomach upset and things like that. It actually can cause developmental brain disorders and so forth. So it could change people's lives. And that's one that was really interesting. There's another gentleman that's working on looking at ways to help with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria problem that's spreading. So some really interesting stuff. Like I said, I've only made it about halfway around, so I'm looking forward to the rest.
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_03]: So are any of these experiments similar to what you would have done in grad school?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, for me, I was not involved in running experiments over at Tufts. I was a biochem major for a while, then a bio major, but I was never part of the lab experience that these guys are doing. This is a whole other level of what you get the chance to do if you take advantage at a college.
[4up_cmlg7RM_SPEAKER_03]: That's great, Mr. Wilson. Thank you so much. Have a great time at the River Science Fair.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right. Thank you, you too.
[Carrie Anne]: Did you see that? See what? A matter baby. What's a matter baby? Yeah, not much. What's the matter with you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing at all.