Developing On a Sunday afternoon in January,
a special ceremony is taking place in
Ybor City. Inside the Capitano Family
Grand Ballroom at the Italian Club, several
hundred have gathered for International
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
When it’s time to initiate the candle
lighting ceremony with the elderly
Holocaust survivors, Key Club
president Kyle Erickson ’18 and nine
of his classmates from the Key Club
carefully coordinate the powerful,
emotional occasion.
At three-day team camp in July
in brutally hot, middle-of-nowhere
Florida, Jesuit football captain Anthony
Nelson ’18, who would sign with
Harvard a few months later, propels the
team through drills, with his words,
attitude, and actions, in the dog days
of summer.
On a weeknight in early December,
SADD club president Patrick Davis ’18
16 JESUIT PERSPECTIVES • WINTER 2017-18
leads three dozen members of Students
Against Destructive Decisions
at a special commemorative event in
Temple Terrace, at which those killed
or injured by impaired drivers are
remembered.
These are just a few of the many
examples of student leadership
emanating from Jesuit High School
this school year.
In mid-September, a couple of days
after Hurricane Irma tore through
Florida, a few dozen Jesuit students
came to campus for the big clean-up,
and then fanned out into the Plaza
Terrace neighborhood to help the
community. Others organized impromptu
clean-ups in their own neighborhoods,
and many more traveled down to Belle
Glade for a weekend to help that rural,
impoverished community in its
post-hurricane recovery.
Greg Davis ’19, who was honored
last year as the Military Youth of the
Year for the state of Florida for his
leadership at the MacDill AFB Boys &
Girls Club, this year founded a Photography
Club. Its mission is to cull
impactful images of Jesuit and Tampa,
from photos taken by club members,
for auction at Gaudiosa, so they can
assist Jesuit’s fi nancial aid program.
Several juniors and seniors
launched a new business club last
year, The Company, and have sought
some of the Tampa Bay area’s leading
CEOs and CFOs, bringing them to
campus each month to speak to club
members.
Such demonstrations of leadership
show great initiative on the part of
the students, and are a byproduct of
Jesuit’s focus on leadership.
In 2010, the Jesuit’s Board of
Trustees affi rmed four key priorities
necessary for the schools advancement.
No. 3: Student life with an
emphasis on developing leadership.
Leadership opportunities abound
at Jesuit, in the more than 30 clubs,
in the 20 teams playing 12 sports,
and in daily life.
Emphasizing leadership opportunities
via clubs and sports is part of
the school’s commitment to leadership.
In addition, the past few years
Jesuit has added a Leadership Retreat
to its already robust retreat program.
....................
Off the grid, on a 500-acre
ranch an hour-and-a-half from
Tampa, for 48 hours over two chilly
nights in January with no cell phones
or electricity or showers, sleeping in
tents and cooking meals over an open
fi re, the Jesuit High School students
Key Club provides service leadership at the annual Holocaust Remembrance