5th & 6th Grade Athletics
In addition to its physical education curriculum, NPS offers a robust athletic program in the upper grades. Whereas many schools do not start organized athletics until the middle school years, NPS students have the opportunity each season to participate in competitive sports beginning in Fifth Grade. Accordingly, NPS students learn important sport-specific skills, as well as valuable lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, and competition.
Fifth and Sixth Graders may participate in single-sex teams for soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. NPS teams are led by experienced coaches with strong backgrounds in the sports they coach.
Following NPS, many of the School’s athletic program alumni go on to play—and star in—sports in middle school and high school. In recent history, NPS alumni have participated at the high school level in sports including baseball, lacrosse, football, crew, swimming, gymnastics, ice hockey, golf, soccer, squash, field hockey, rugby, figure skating, track and field, cross-country, volleyball, kayaking, and softball.
Many NPS alumni have also gone on to play varsity collegiate sports at a wide range of Division I and Division III schools, including Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, University of Pennsylvania, Auburn University, Cornell University, Colby College, Middlebury College, Denison University, Sewanee: the University of the South, College of the Holy Cross, United State Naval Academy, Case Western Reserve University, University of Maryland, Claremont McKenna College, Dickinson College, Yale University, and Kenyon College, among others. NPS alumna Kat Holmes, Class of 2005, is a US Olympic fencer who competed in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio.
