News
The Alumni Slam Dunk the Silver Bucket!
January 16, 2009
One of Wakefield School's oldest traditions (certainly our oldest athletic tradition) is the Silver Bucket Basketball game which was held this year on January 9th in the Upper Gym. Although the tradition began as a challenge between alumni and the varsity teams, in its current incarnation, the challenge is between alumni and faculty.
Alas, despite an enthusiastic showing of faculty basketball players, including captain Matt Zontine, Ryan Cook, Peter Morgan, Tee Summers, Paul Sipes, and Scott Barron, they couldn't quite do it alone. To the rescue came members of the class of 1984, Todd Landis, John Piper and Matt Mattingly the always-game husband of Sarah McGovern Mattingly '83. A match was then mounted against more recently graduated alumni - Austin Lee, George Hales, CJ Dubash, Ryan Plummer, Adham Yusupov, and Tim Oakes who ended up besting their elders and walking away with the 2009 Silver Bucket!
Legend has it that, in the early 1980’s, a group of Wakefield Upper School students ran the two miles to Flint Hill to hone their basketball skills on the concrete floor of John Lee’s wood stove factory. Mr. Lee, husband of teacher Margaret Lee and father of students Gaby and Britney, purchased a baskeball and a silver bucket from a local hardware store and the Silver Bucket Challenge was born!
The Silver Bucket games were played by students and alumni from 1985 well into the 1990’s but did not follow Wakefield’s migration to Marshall and then The Plains....until 2005 when the first, new generation of Silver Bucket Challenges appeared on the scene. The original Silver Bucket (really more of a tin bucket) is proudly displayed in the development office with a listing of match winners over the years. Please enjoy pictures from this lively event in the photo gallery.
