Ethel Walker School
Nora Griffiths is a serious student-athlete. She steps onto the court and into the classroom with determined focus to always achieve her very best. But at Walker’s, she also found that competing as part of a team meant much more. “Being a student-athlete at Walker’s means that you are playing for more than yourself and more than your team; you are playing for the school. You are representing a program every time you step into a court or onto a field,” says the recent graduate.
As an athlete, Griffiths and her teammates would take time out to watch the middle schoolers compete or head to the sidelines of a field hockey game. Being there for each other created community, long-lasting friendships, and trust. “I knew that my teammates always had my back and that they were there for whatever I needed,” she recalls. Griffiths remembers looking up to senior athletes who looked out for her when she was a freshman and how she tried to pass that on to underclassmen when she herself was a senior on the team.
The bonds among teammates also led them to many successes, including winning their holiday tournament and multiple NEPSAC appearances. These successes earned Griffiths a spot at the collegiate-level basketball court. She is heading to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the fall as a student-athlete, where she plans on studying aerospace engineering.
Griffiths says she has always loved math and science and especially enjoys experiments, analyzing data, and hands-on activities in the field, much of which was fostered during her time at Walker’s. She credits Ms. Jenn Wall, her math teacher of three years, with making “every day in class interesting and fun.” She also says she enjoyed Advanced Chemistry with Dr. Julia Sheldon, “It was one of the most challenging classes I have ever taken, but I learned so much in it and really enjoyed the class.”
As Griffiths takes all she learned on and off the field to the next level, she will carry with her many lessons gleaned from her time at Walker’s, especially the intangible. “I will miss being at a place where I am comfortable to be myself and to express my opinions. At Walker’s, I learned to be more confident, and I was able to find a space where I could be true to myself.”
