This year’s Boys’ Varsity Lacrosse team captains rock their new hairdos.
Watching Choate Boys’ Varsity Lacrosse annihilate IMG Academy on April 21, you might have noticed many players on the team looking bald or like they have several pounds of ramen noodles flying out of their helmets. For some context, this is all part of their latest team-bonding activity: hairstyles.
You would have to pay me at least $500 to shave off my luscious locks of hair. Personally, I care about my hair too much to let that happen. That being said, I salute the members of Boys’ Varsity Lacrosse who were brave enough to let Miles Jolly ’23 take a pair of clippers to their heads. Still, I love seeing the team and a few other soldiers sporting the tennis ball look or the lemon-colored, bleached-hair look — and an unfortunate minority who did both.
The chain of hairdos started when Harrison Keith ’23 decided he wanted to rock a buzz cut and asked Jolly to cut his hair. Soon, more and more people jumped on the trend, and Jolly became the team’s unofficial barber. Although I can’t believe that Marty Griffin ’23 let him chop the lion’s mane off the top of his head, I have to say that his new hairdo didn’t come out looking too shabby.
While the buzz cuts have grown on me as more time has passed, I’m still not sure about the bleaching.
Jack Wable ’24 and Oliver Nappi ’25 are the two best examples I can think of. They pull off a pretty good bleached look, but it also begs the question: “Has there ever even been a bleaching gone right?”
Regardless of their appearance, saying that the hairstyling hasn’t brought the lacrosse team closer together would be tough. I can see the camaraderie between the players, and it’s clear that they are willing to lay the dignity (that lays upon their heads) on the line for each other.
Their attitude towards their hairstyling adventures is the reason for their success as a winning team. They are a close group that trusts each other and will stick together whether they’re winning or losing, or when their hair grows out and everyone on campus starts to think that we have multiple Ellen DeGeneres clones walking around in the dining hall.
At the end of the day, it’s just hair. It isn’t permanent like a tattoo or the marker you used to draw on the person who fell asleep first at the sleepover, so who cares? It’ll grow back eventually, so why not have some fun with it?
A positive team spirit is both more permanent and more important. However, since I’m performing in the spring musical and would have to deal with the wrath of our director if I chopped my hair off, I am leaving myself out of the buzzing and bleaching and choosing life instead.
