Getting to Know the Headmaster - Part 1: Sports
Dr. Bond is pictured bottom right.
The “Socrates of Football”
Sports have played a formative role in Dr. Bond’s life. His older brother taught him how to throw and catch, and that was the beginning of an endless stream of pickup games of baseball in the backyard of the Bonds where all the neighborhood kids gathered to play after school. There were no uniforms, no trophies, and no parents to organize teams or settle disputes, and that made it glorious. Basketball games were added when Dr. Bond's father set up a homemade plywood backboard with a hoop on the roof of the garage overhanging the driveway. Ultimately Dr. Bond and his friends graduated to games of "blood and guts" in which whoever dared to pick up the football and run was gang tackled and forced to cough up the ball to the next foolhardy fellow.
At Mountain Lakes High School in northern New Jersey, where Dr. Bond played football, basketball, and baseball, he came under the tutelage of the late great football coach, Doug Wilkins. As a senior, Dr. Bond was co-captain of the first undefeated football team in the history of Mountain Lakes High School (1973). His experience playing football for Doug Wilkins, unbeknownst to Dr. Bond at the time, moved him toward Catholicism long before he converted in 1986. Doug Wilkins eventually became the fourth all-time in victories in New Jersey high school football, but victories were secondary to the formation of character that was the hallmark of Doug Wilkins' program. His emphasis on virtue, discipline, the common good, and sacrificing for something greater than one's self, opened the door in Dr. Bond's heart and mind to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.
He first encountered these teachings as a student at Kenyon College, and the writings of Plato and Aristotle set him on the path to the Catholic Church. At Kenyon, Dr. Bond was the captain of the baseball team both as a junior and as a senior, and in his senior year he was elected to the 1978 NCAA, Division III Academic All-America Baseball Team.
As a teacher, Dr. Bond has coached two state championship teams in football (one with his old coach and mentor, Doug Wilkins), and has also coached basketball and baseball. The highlight of his coaching career was when, after taking an underdog team from a 0-7 season to a 3-3-1 season, one of his players dubbed him the "Socrates of football." Given his personal experience with the joy, beauty, and formative power of athletics, Dr. Bond is eager to establish a sports program at the Chesterton Academy of St. John the Evangelist that will complement the academic and spiritual formation of young souls.
