If you’re participating in middle school sports or coaching one this fall, you’ve probably been lucky enough to meet Castilleja’s new middle school athletics director, Chloe Sargeant. Born and raised nearby in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Sargeant comes to Casti with a background of working in education, most recently as a MS athletics director, dean of operations and principal in Sunnyvale.
Middle school athletics is a core experience at Castilleja and leaves a lasting impact that follows student athletes into high school. It’s cherished as a safe place for middle schoolers to discover their first sport or try a new one, and Ms. Sargeant is determined to maintain this tradition and spread the joy of athletics to everyone. She’s been inspired by “the courage of students to try something new,” something she’s found really special about Castilleja, and remarked that “it’s actually such a beautiful thing for students to be able to try without fear of failure.”
Ms. Sergeant’s favorite part about Castilleja overall is the people, and she believes that she could “work anywhere or do anything as long as [she] loves who [she] works with every day.” You can catch her collecting concert posters and brightening up the circle with her smile and waves. Middle school student athletes describe her as “joyful,” “enthusiastic,” and “motivational,” and what she’s enjoyed most in Castilleja athletics so far has been getting to know their families at practices and games.
When it comes to what inspired her own love for athletics, Ms. Sargeant credits how the sports she played growing up, including basketball, swimming, and cross country, shaped her into who she is. Like every student athlete on Castilleja’s campus, she’s learned how much sports can teach you about life: “I think that athletics especially are such a smaller brushstroke of the bigger picture of all the highs and lows of life,” she said.
From the toughest practices in the rain to winning CCS championships, her words ring true as Castilleja athletes have experienced it all and bring their strength and resilience to every area of their lives.
Ms. Sargeant’s philosophy for athletics and her new role at Castilleja stems from a similar perspective. Reflecting on some of her family members who struggle to balance, run, and jump due to a genetic physical condition, she noted that “watching my older brother navigate swimming, he could never start a race off the block…So he had to start in the water for every single race, which was really really hard for me, as a competitive athlete growing up, to watch that…because he started the race with a guaranteed loss every single time.”
She credits the wisdom of her older brother and mother in forming how she approaches athletics today, with a lesson learned from many moments of her life and from her family: “doing your best is so much more important than being the best.” Whether it’s losing a game or getting a less than perfect test score, these words are something the whole Castilleja community can carry with them.
As the fall sports season progresses, Ms. Sargeant is looking forward to tackling the basketball and soccer seasons in the winter and getting to know more people around the Castilleja community. So the next time you’re in the lower gym, around the pool patio or even walking around the circle, be sure to welcome her to the Castilleja family!
