Author: Jerry Leger

On a Saturday morning, you will hear it before you see it if you drive past practically any American public park. That plasticky, hollow pop. The sound of a whiffle ball striking a composite paddle reverberated off the chain-link, interspersed with occasional groans and laughter. This was primarily a retiree sport a few years ago. The gym instructors driving by are beginning to take notes, and the people on those courts are growing younger. Pickleball in high school is no longer a curiosity. In the last two years, participation among those aged 13 to 17 has more than doubled, which…

Perhaps sixty children wearing helmets are conducting drills on a recently painted turf field behind a public middle school on a soggy Saturday in suburban Columbus. That field was a soccer pitch five years ago. Most of those parents probably couldn’t have explained the difference between an attackman and a long-pole midfielder ten years ago, let alone the name of a lacrosse stick. They are now watching a sport that, until recently, was almost exclusively associated with a region of zip codes between Baltimore and Boston while sitting in folding chairs and sipping coffee on the sidelines. The oldest team…

Ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles are not typically the first questions students ask. Time is of the essence. What is the actual duration of the AP Environmental Science exam, and how much of it will be manageable? Two hours and forty minutes is the official response. After the test, the honest response—whispered in the hallways—is that those 160 minutes don’t go by at the same pace. The exam is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. local time on Friday, May 15, 2026, according to the College Board. A lot is shaped just by that detail. The majority of students enter the…

Before the Grizzlies jersey and the All-Rookie selections, Brandon Clarke was just another lanky forward from Phoenix who was unsure of his place in the world. In the fall of 2015, he ended up at San Jose State, a school that, let’s face it, doesn’t typically host future first-round picks. Nobody considered the Spartans to be a basketball factory. Nevertheless, something began to take shape somewhere on that campus, between the empty Mountain West road trips and the practice gyms. On paper, his rookie campaign was modest. Sixth Man of the Year in the Mountain West, with three starts in…

Strongsville High School defies easy summarization. On a weekday morning, it appears to be just another suburban Ohio campus when you drive past the brick exterior on Lunn Road. Buses are parked, children are carrying backpacks, and a flag is flapping in the wind off Cuyahoga County. However, a more nuanced image begins to take shape when you spend some time there, conversing with parents in the parking lot or looking through decades’ worth of clippings. It’s a school with genuine pride, genuine wounds, and a community that appears to have reconciled both. Located within the Strongsville City School District,…

Henley-on-Thames has a certain charm in May. The college on Deanfield Avenue is moving through the rhythms of the summer term, with students wandering between buildings, mock results returning, and conversations shifting to what comes next. The river is bustling with crews getting ready for the regatta, and the cafés on the high street fill up early. Because it’s a small town, everyone knows someone who knows someone. This helps explain why the past week’s events have felt so weighty. Meningococcal disease claimed the life of Henley College student Lewis Waters. Lewis’s father, Sean, posted on social media that the…

The announcement seems almost archaic. A private university with one of the biggest endowments in the nation determines that who enters a Hyde Park classroom shouldn’t be determined by the cost of attendance. This week, UChicago announced that families making less than $250,000 annually will pay no tuition beginning in the fall of 2027. Housing, meals, and fees will not be covered by those making less than $125,000. It’s a broad move that may be overdue or strategically timed, depending on who you ask. You can sense the calm buzz of a place that takes itself seriously if you stroll…

Once again, it’s that peculiar time of year. The one where parents’ group chats suddenly erupt with screenshots of rejection letters after being silent for a week. A mother in a suburban area of Ohio told me, almost laughing, that her son had three years of varsity tennis, two AP research projects, a 4.0, a 1510 SAT, and a waitlist at a school she thought was a “safety.” She didn’t sound particularly irate. She sounded perplexed. More than anything else, that uncertainty has come to define admissions in 2026. Families used a sort of folk math for many years. A…

Even though McMasters Elementary’s hallways still smell like crayons and floor polish, something seems strange if you stroll through them in the late afternoon. Echo is more prevalent than it was previously. There were fewer backpacks in line. fewer voices. For years, Pasadena teachers have been observing it in that subdued, somewhat superstitious manner: first, a class section has been reduced, then a kindergarten room has been converted into a storage area, and finally, a well-known name has retired and never been replaced. The district has now expressed what no one wanted to say aloud: some of these schools might…

Like most legal anniversaries, this year’s anniversary fell quietly on a Sunday. Seventy-two years have passed since nine justices signed a ruling that altered the nation’s moral framework, and the atmosphere surrounding it has changed. less joyous. more vigilant. Walking past a university bulletin board that is still covered in notices about diversity programming from the previous semester gives the impression that the document that everyone keeps bringing up is being carefully and slowly placed on a shelf. The desks were never the main issue in Brown v. Board of Education. It concerned who was allowed to sit at them…