Fr om t he Head
O Spoon Game By Sheila Culbert
4
Loomis Chaffee Magazine Winter 2022
n Saturday, November 13, several busloads of Loomis Chaffee athletes and students made their way to the Kent School for the newly reinstated Spoon Game and other athletics contests. The story of the Spoon Game is, of course, legendary within Loomis/Kent lore— but the two schools’ football teams had not competed against one another since 2012. It was later that school year when Kent elected to drop Loomis Chaffee from its schedule due to changes in the Erickson League rules. The Kent School was founded in 1906, just a few years before The Loomis Institute opened its doors in 1914. Both schools touted a democratic ethos, an accessible tuition model, and a commitment to preparing students from all walks of life. Loomis students modeled their proposal for a student government on the Kent plan, and Mr. Batchelder approved it. Indeed, Mr. Batchelder was close friends with Father Sill, the Kent headmaster. The two men admired one another, so it was natural that they would also compete against one another in sports—and so they did. In those early days, Mr. Batchelder coached the football team and was a passionate advocate for his team. Sidney Eaton, a member of the class of 1923, described Mr. B as “a vocal competitor” and a “berserk partisan.” Mr. B was always quick to dispute a call, and that is exactly what he did in the game against Kent in 1921. As both schools’ players piled up on the Kent goal line, the officials ruled against a Loomis touchdown. Mr. Batchelder stormed onto the field to be met by an equally animated Father Sill. The two nearly came to fisticuffs until saner heads prevailed and the game resumed. Kent went on to win 13 to 7. Following the game, the two teams met for tea and cocoa at the Head’s House, where, Eaton wrote, “sociability was cool to icy.” It was at this tea that a Kent student pocketed a silver teaspoon from Mrs.
Batchelder’s wedding cutlery set. When she later discovered the spoon was missing, Mr. Batchelder contacted Father Sill to demand that the Kent student return the spoon. An outraged Father Sill suggested that it was just as likely that the culprit was a Loomis student. With the friendship between the two men now irrevocably shattered, the two schools would not play again until 1934. It was not until 1947 when the complete story of the disappearing teaspoon was fully revealed. A Kent boy had indeed taken the spoon—perhaps inadvertently. When, several months later, he approached Father Sill to tell him what had happened, relations with Loomis were already too far gone. Father Sill did not want to admit to Mr. B that he had been right, so Father Sill told the boy to keep the spoon. Subsequently it was passed down from head prefect to head prefect as a secret trophy. On the occasion of the celebration of the 35th anniversary of Mr. B’s headship, the new head of Kent, Father Chalmers, told the story and offered to return the spoon. Mrs. Batchelder told Father Chalmers that Kent should keep the spoon, but the two schools agreed to have a replica spoon made by New York jewelers Cartier that the two schools would then compete for annually. Each year the new Spoon would be awarded to the winning team, and the score would be engraved along the handle. And so Kent Day became enshrined in Loomis and Kent traditions and was played every year from 1947 until 2012. When I became head in 2008, the football team had suffered a long string of losing seasons, and we needed to do something to get the program back on its feet. We hired a new coach and made the decision to leave the Erickson League believing that the league’s rules limited Loomis’ chances to improve its struggling football program and compete effectively both in the league and against non-league teams such as Deerfield, Andover, and Exeter. We continued to play Kent through the
