Athletics

MCDS offers an unusually comprehensive Physical Education and after-school Athletics program. Students of all aptitudes, abilities and ambitions have ample opportunity to learn, evolve, achieve and succeed in a nurturing and supportive environment.

Physical Education classes meet 3-4 times per week for 40-minutes for all students grades K-8. Instruction is logical, sequential and cumulative. Basic locomotor skills provide a foundation for increasingly complex movement patterns, games and sports. Sport-specific fundamental skills are learned and practiced in isolation before being incorporated into game activity.

Team concepts and strategies are explored and ingrained. There is emphasis on the notion that “there is more to games than the games themselves.” Relevant values such as selflessness, cooperation, and perspective are reinforced. Typical Physical Education units include: movement, group games, cross-country, soccer, volleyball, football, floor hockey, conditioning, ball handling, gymnastics, stunts and apparatus, basketball, team handball, kickball/whiffleball, folk dance, badminton, cricket, softball, and track and field.

As Physical Education is a multi-year-path at MCDS, students are encouraged to “Be patient with the process,” and to embrace both “fitness now,” and “fitness for a lifetime.” Physical Education is fun, illuminating, and challenging, an opportunity for self- discovery and essential social integration.

Student-Athletes seeking an enriching, educational and competitive outlet may begin representing MCDS in interscholastic athletics beginning in the sixth grade. MCDS participates in the Bay Area Independent Athletic League (BAIAL), fielding teams of boys and girls at the Club (6th Grade), Junior Varsity (predominantly 7th Grade), and Varsity (predominantly 8th Grade) levels.

Sports offered include: volleyball, cross- country, soccer, basketball and softball. Values emphasized on athletic teams are: commitment, persistence, resilience, and perspective. All teams recognize that one goal of an athletic event is to win, and players and coaches will employ specific strategies for success.

In addition, teams are conscious that they are representing MCDS in the larger community, so their personal conduct assumes equal value with their competitive efforts.