"Just win " Athletic Director Leon Modeste, above, and longtime friend Lou Bernieri, instructor in English, analyze a big Blue performance.   Giving support from the sidelines are Modeste and his wife, Marlys Edwards, dean of students. Photo by Fred Lind, parent of Caroline Lind '02 .     At the Friends of Andover Athletics dinner in May are, left to right, Terrell Ivory '00; Dick Phelps '46, co-chair of the Friends of Andover Athletics; Leon Modeste; Titus Ivory '96; and New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick '71. Brothers Terrell and Titus each received the Ray Tippett Award. Titus returned to campus from Penn State to speak about his former coach.

by Lou Bernieri This spring Leon Modeste completed a 10-year term as Andover's athletic director. A member of the athletic department since 1986, Modeste will remain on the faculty and will continue to coach varsity football, boys' varsity basketball and boys' junior varsity lacrosse.  When asked to write about Leon Modeste's decade as Phillips Academy's athletic director, I realized that although I'd known the man for over 30 years, he remained enigmatic to me. All I really had to go on were strange utterances of his, fragments of his thinking called "Modesteisms." Modesteisms take the form of terse, cryptic sentences that, once decoded, reveal sweeping philosophical assertions. Three of them, explicated below, act as a lens through which to view the truth about this man.   SUDO ERGO SUM "Sudo ergo sum" ("I sweat, therefore I am") is the remarkable Modeste Cogito (MC). Shortly after assuming his post as athletic director in 1989, Modeste transformed Descartes' famous "Cogito ergo sum" into what he claimed was "a comment on physical education." The MC challenges Cartesian logic. It implies that the ephemeral nature of thinking is insufficient evidence for proof of one's existence and that existence is more accurately verified by intense somatic activity. It foresees the time when mind/body dualism will be erased, when the intellectual and the physical will be seen as equal parts of the same being and athletic activity will be judged for what it is—a self-expressive art like dance or music. The MC's egalitarian implications suggest that sweating is not only the privilege of interscholastic athletes and coaches. All people should have the opportunity to sweat. The fruits of the MC are evidenced in two of the most important accomplishments of Modeste's tenure: the evolution of the school's physical education course and the creation of the Rosenau Fitness Center. With a holistic vision of health and physical education, the athletic department under Modeste's guidance fashioned Physical Education 100 into one of the most enjoyable, progressive and effective physical education courses in the country. The course does not just include experience with competitive and noncompetitive games, ropes course and swimming challenges, weight-lifting and fitness instruction, biology and physiology lessons. It also equips students with skills and knowledge for lifelong health and fitness. A similar vision for community health informed the department's planning of the Roseneau Fitness Center. Constructed and run for use by the whole Andover community, the center is used nearly every day during the school year by 200-300 students, faculty and staff.   JUST WIN "Just win," a Modeste Dictum (MD) created early in his tenure, appears to be reserved primarily for interscholastic teams. A facile interpretation associates this MD with Vince Lombardi's famous quote: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." A more accurate association would be with a quote from Modeste's favorite book, the Bible. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul (whom some believe to be Paul Kalkstein, Modeste's predecessor and mentor) wrote, "Brethren, don't you know that while all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, only one wins the prize? Run to win." Like Paul, Modeste sees sports as a spiritual arena where the struggle for victory transcends the final score, yet where, like a Zen master, one must always keep the goal of winning in mind. In the final reckoning, it is not the victory, but the intense desire to win, that ennobles athletic endeavor. Life is tenuous and short, the Creator elusive and mysterious; yet the thrill of over- coming time and luck, of beating the odds, of being a winner, can transcend these human limitations—if only for a moment. And if one loses, there is always another game. Never accept a defeat as the end of the struggle. Just win. (In Modeste's 10 years as athletic director, PA interscholastic teams have won an astounding 55 New England Prep School Championships.)   WE ARE FAMILY "We are family." Clearly, this Modeste Utterance (MU) is the seminal Modesteism, the basis of all other Modesteisms. This MU refers to any team or group of individuals in the Modeste orbit—the whole Phillips Academy community. It asserts the connectedness of all human beings, no matter what race, creed, color, nationality or sexual preference. It implies that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that people working together, bonded by love and loyalty, can achieve the miraculous. In the end, Modesteism rests heavily on the fact that humans are essentially communal creatures who need each other to achieve societal goals and personal fulfillment. In any good relationship, the bonds of love and friendship between individuals are sanctified by the presence of the spirit. "I sweat, therefore I am." "Just win." "We are family." Taken together, this trinity of distilled thought reveals, I believe, the essential Modeste.   Lou Bernieri is an instructor in the English department and director of the Andover Bread Loaf Writing Workshop. He and Modeste originally met as freshmen in high school and went on to be co-captains of their high school   Copyright, Phillips Academy, 2000