Burroughs releases book documenting 
88 years of athletic history

information is provided by the Public Relations staff at John Burroughs School.

Burroughs had a writing dream team in former coach and athletic director Jim Lemen and Jud Calkins ’59, co-authors of the school’s athletic history, Teammates for Life, which was released at the school’s groundbreaking for a new athletic center and performing arts/assembly center on April 12.

Lemen, who had been involved in Burroughs athletics for half the life of the school, brought an encyclopedic knowledge of the school’s athletic past. Calkins — a four-sport JBS athlete, a lawyer and former writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — brought masterful research skills and a knack for telling a story.

The result of their collaboration is a 266-page, full-color, hardcover book that spans the decades, bringing to life not only the high points (along with some low points, the bizarre, the laughable and the remarkable), but also explaining athletics done the right way. It conveys an abiding sense of community and how generations of athletes have learned from coaches who epitomized the values that sport engenders. As Lemen says, “Teammates is more than a story of wins and losses over the decades. It is the story about all the values that one hopes young athletes gain from sports.”

Consider these morsels from the pages of the book:

If the results from a 1935 name-the-team contest had swung differently, Burroughs teams might have been known as the Hill-billies, the Killers or the Goons. A week after announcing the contest, The World declared that a winner had been selected. Varsity teams would henceforth be known as the Bombers.

A former JBS athlete, Dick Sisler ’38, who played baseball with the Cardinals, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds, was mentioned in Ernest Hemingway’s final novel, The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway wrote, “In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia, I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park.”

Prior to 1949, the cheerleading squad was ad hoc, loosely organized and strictly a male domain. After the student body voted to admit girls, a tryout assembly was convened and a lunchtime vote followed.

On Halloween, 1958, the Bombers spooked the powerful Jefferson City Jays 13-0 in the state capital, marking the last loss by the Jays before a 71-game winning streak over seven and one half years. The Jays barely squeaked by JBS in the 1959 return match at Leland Field.

The football Bombers of 1961 scored 400 points to average a point a minute, the fifth highest scoring team (by average) in Missouri history.

The seeds of JBS dominance in field hockey were started in the 1980s, when the 1983 and 1984 teams compiled a remarkable cumulative record of 39-1, winning the Midwest Field Hockey tournament title in 1983 and placing second in a heart-rending loss in 1984.

Teams of the 1990s added seven championships, with two others added in 2000 and 2010 to make a total of 11.

Meridith Thorpe ’95, a member of three JBS championship teams and a standout at the University of Virginia, returned to Burroughs to coach and led the team that claimed the 2010 championship.

A tradition of tennis dominance includes the current nine-year chain of women’s State singles championships won by Susan Sullivan ’06, Alex Lehman ’09 and Sydney Lehman ’12.

Their predecessors in starring roles include Butch Bucholz ’59, who as a professional achieved a top-five world ranking, and Carol Hanks Aucamp ’61, who competed four times at Wimbledon, including a mixed-doubles partnership with Arthur Ashe.

The 2001 football team achieved one of the great comebacks of all time in the televised semifinal game against Monroe City at Burroughs. Trailing Monroe City 19-0 at halftime, the Bombers staged a second-half surge to win the game 33-19.

The team went on to claim the school’s eighth State championship.
Teammates for Life was made possible by the JBS Alumni Association.