SAUGUS — The principal of the Saugus Middle/High School, Brendon Sullivan, is hoping for the community’s help in gathering old athletic records to expand the collection of artifacts and keep the history alive.
Through discussions with parents, the athletic director Terri Pillsbury, and people in the District, Sullivan discovered that one of the things that Saugus doesn’t have that he would like is a great historical record for athletics.
They have statistics and records from the current era, but not as much as they look further back.
“I’d really like to see if there’s anyone out there that has old records for Saugus High School athletics,” Sullivan said. “We have students doing great things on the football field, on the soccer field, and we want to make sure that we recognize people appropriately.”
The goal is to have a better sense of where people would fall in history, so Sullivan is working with others to dig through the records that they currently have.
Many of the trophies and banners got moved during the pandemic when the new school opened so not everything is out on display, but the school is working to take everything out and catalog it.
“(We’re) not talking about records from like three or four years ago, talking about 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s,” Sullivan said. “(I) want to make sure we continue the legacy and tradition in the new building.”
Being in a new building, Sullivan wants to fit whatever they can in the display cases to help students feel the connection to Saugus High School.
“When you move a building in the pandemic, it becomes kind of abrupt for people. One day they’re going to the old high school, the world shuts down, and when they come back they’re in the new building,” Sullivan said. “One of the things now that we’re settled in, I want to help students today to feel the connections of Saugus High School.”
What Sullivan is looking for is any individuals who have interesting records or artifacts that they want to share or inform the school about.
“I’m not expecting people to clean out their attics and give us every single scrapbook paper that they find, but there’s also just kind of the overtime things get lost,” Sullivan said. “It’s important to the community and important to the students that there’s always a sense of history and context so the students know they’re part of a legacy and something bigger than themselves.”
People have donated historical elements and artifacts to SHS in the past, as someone donated records of the school band from the 50s or 60s during the new auditorium dedication, and another person donated a sheet detailing the class of 1933.
Sullivan hopes this can continue, but on a larger scale, as an ongoing project to add to the history of SHS athletics and to ” make sure we have our legacy intact.”
On a personal level, Sullivan said he is a fan of history and finds this stuff interesting.
“We’re a community, we’re a school that’s very invested in our history,” he said. “I think it’s also incumbent upon us, those who are here every day, to keep that tradition alive, and to engage with the community, to make sure that people know the SPS (Saugus Public Schools) that they know and love are still around and our students are still achieving… To be a sachem is to be something great.”
Those seeking to submit athletic records can email them to the school at [email protected].
