The Most Incredible Athlete You Have Ever Met - The Putney School

The Most Incredible
Athlete You Have
Ever Met
By Natalie Silver ’12
24 Putney post

“I love to share the joy you can derive from
exercising. Just from moving your body. It
doesn’t have to be for anything in particular,
other than that perfect selfish moment you use
to take care of yourself. It’s a fantastic feeling
when people just let themselves feel that. They
don’t resist it; they just absorb it.”
—Michael Chevalier
Michael Chevalier laughs as I gasp for air at the end of
my sprints. “That . . . was hard,” I manage to squeeze
out. “Right!? Isn’t it awesome?” he says with a big
smile. His laughter isn’t malicious; he is genuinely
pleased that I have found this difficult. But pleased in
the “I’m proud of you” way. “I think I need a break,”
I say, finally standing up. I am recovering from a cold
and the constant nasal pressure is making the already
difficult suicide sprints feel like death. “Yes of course.
No demerits,” he says. That is classic Michael Chevalier.
He will push you and push you and make you feel
great about what you have accomplished, but it’s all
in the context of your own personal ability. If you are
feeling like it’s too much, “no demerits” for taking it
down a notch.
Michael is different from any coach I have ever had.
With the others it was always expected that you would
meet their standard, not your own. If you were injured,
play through it. Sick? Too bad. You could ride the bench
if you could withstand the palpable judgment that
would undoubtedly be passed about your character. But
Michael isn’t like that. He wants everyone he trains to
feel joy from exercise and—more importantly—to feel
joy from pushing their bodies to the limit. He has made
me less afraid of my own limitations and helped me
accept them and get joy from reaching them. In a world
based on competition, Michael Chevalier has taught me
how to relax and enjoy whatever sport it is I am doing.
I put my foot next to the first cone and nod to let him
know I am ready for the next set of sprints.
“Alright sister. Go for it.”
Most people at The Putney School, where Michael is a
nurse and the athletic trainer, see him as only that. But
Michael, like so many superheroes, is far more than he
appears in everyday life. Michael is the most incredible
athlete you have never met.
Michael was born in 1966, in Goshen,
Massachusetts, one of nine children.
He began to play baseball at age six and was
immediately made a pitcher. “My friends
and I played every sport imaginable” Michael
tells me, but baseball was his passion.
“It was just what you did. It didn’t feel weird to
stand on the mound and have people staring at
me. It felt natural.”
Michael turns from side to side in his swivel chair
as we sit in his office. There is something pure
about him—not naïve, however. No, because you
can tell he has felt pain and happiness and sadness
and has generally lived life fully. Once you have
met him, you know he is remarkable. Not only
as an athlete, but also as a human. The sense of
purity I feel from him is rare.
“The high school I went to was competitive,
so it became a big deal that I made varsity as a
freshman,” Michael tells me.
“I had a few hits in my first few games. I didn’t
really think about the pressure. I just did what I
do. The ball is coming, you see it, you hit it.” He
says with a laugh. As we continue to talk about
his high school years, every story has the same
matter-of-fact air. He did what he did. He was
Incredible
[Ed. note: Natalie Silver ’12,
(pictured) now in her first
year at Bates College, wrote
this profile of Putney health
office staff member and athletic
trainer, Michael Chevalier, as
part of her Senior Exhibition
on sports journalism
last spring.]
Everyone
who frequents the
field house after
3 p.m. knows Michael
Chevalier is our
athletic trainer,
But Did you know
he was once a semi-
professional Athlete?
Putney post 25

Athlete
Incredible
the
During home games,
Michael is the go-to
guy for both teams
wHEN it comes to firstline
medical attention.
star of his baseball team, but he never told me
that. I knew. Michael would never say he was the
best because he doesn’t think that way.
In that competitive environment, a freshman on
the varsity baseball team created a lot of buzz,
and a fair amount of press. When Michael was
a junior, major league scouts started to show up
at his games. Even though he was getting this
attention, Michael was not drafted right out of
high school. “Apparently, I wasn’t draft material,”
says Michael, in that same matter-of-fact manner.
“I always struggled academically. School was
always a challenge . . . sports were my outlet. They
were my confidence.” Michael knew, even then,
that exercise was his key to sleeping better and
enjoying peace of mind.
When Michael got out of high school, he
continued to play baseball, at first in a summer
league, and after three years, he was picked up
to play on a semi-pro team. Michael was 21.
The semi-pro team had a long summer schedule
and Michael was pitching almost every night of
the week. When he talks about the guys on the
team, his face beams as he remembers the beers
they drank after games and the trash they talked
during practice.
Minor league scouts were always showing up at
semi-pro games. But that third summer they were
again showing up for Michael. When I asked him
if he ever got nervous, he shook his head. “Not
really. If I thought about it I guess I would, but
when I was on the field they weren’t part of the
equation. They weren’t one of my teammates.
My teammates were it. I didn’t care about
anything else. The team was everything to me.”
Michael was approached by a man from the
Pittsfield Mets, the AA development team for
the New York Mets. “ I told him this is what I
was always aiming to do. I wasn’t good enough to
be drafted. I was what was called a roster filler. But I
didn’t care. I just wanted to play.” So Michael went
to show the team his stuff. “It was one of those
times that all the stars aligned. When I went and
pitched for them, the game felt so easy.” Michael
signed with the team for the next season.
“I had a good year. I was throwing well. And
the next year was better. My stats kept getting
better, and I started to wonder, are they going to
move me up to AAA? AAA is in eyesight of the
big leagues. And I was very excited about that.”
Michael was working hard and it showed. But
the “next step” conversations weren’t happening.
Michael stands at about 5 feet 9. He was by far
the smallest guy, but he was also throwing harder
than all of them, around 92 mph. “They [major
league scouts and managers] thought, and it was
true, that smaller guys used so much more energy
pitching than big guys.” In order to compensate
for the energy he was expending, he trained
outside of the team practice time. “My teammates
used to always laugh at that. ‘He just will not tire,
you could put him out there after 12 innings
and he’d still be throwing just as hard.’ And I
prided myself on that. I was proving to them
that I wouldn’t break down, and that their size
argument didn’t work.”
But it did in the end. “They told me I definitely
had the stuff to be in ‘the show,’ but that major
league teams wouldn’t give me the chance. That
was hard. I was 25, and by that time it’s too late to
start over. If you don’t get signed with someone
by then, it’s time to stop.” So here you have
Michael Chevalier, who threw harder, trained
harder, and loved the game, but it didn’t matter.
There was no pain in his voice when he talked
about it. No regret.
But as a young athlete on the road to professional
sports, hearing that there was no future for
him in the game he loved was devastating.
Who was he without being a baseball player?
He struggled with this sudden redefinition of his
life. Michael continued playing baseball in his
old semi-pro league, for the love of the game.
Something else became evident as the dream
of professional baseball faded away: that feeling of
release and happiness after exercise. “At first I did
want to become a better athlete. But what really
happened was that I fell in love with the way I
felt afterwards. That sense of calm, that clarity.”
With this new chapter, he found that being a
professional athlete wasn’t as important
or meaningful as the peace of mind and sense
of calm he got from being fit and exercising.
26 Putney post

“To me it is very meditative. And that’s what
really pulls me in. If I’m feeling distracted or if
the workout feels harder than I know it should,
I know there is something more going on inside
me—that is the resistance I’m meeting. Once I
start, I can analyze that resistance on some levels,
maybe not coming up with an answer, but I
can push that stress out of my body. The sweat
that comes out is the stress exiting my body.”
Michael’s mood always improved after a workout,
and he could focus at work. Exercise always had
been essential to his life, but now he was very
aware of it.
In his late 20s, Michael entered nursing school
and became a trainer at the local gym. His selfconditioning,
combined with years of sports and a
nursing degree, made him incredibly well-versed in
how the body works, and how to train it. He taught
spin classes, did personal training, and more. Michael
also continued his own training.
These days, one of his preferred events is tower
runs. These races take place in some of the tallest
buildings in the country. They are stair races.
This past winter, Michael ran the Empire State
Building race. He came in 26th—out of 3,000.
One of Michael’s favorite training tools for these
races is the ski jump in Brattleboro, Vermont,
where he now lives. The ski jump is only 300
stairs, he says, so he runs it about eight or nine
times. Eight or nine times?? Only 300 stairs? The
man is a beast.
In the late 1980s, when Michael was training
the U.S. crew team at a gym in northern
Massachusetts, he devised terrible, terrible
workouts in an attempt to tire these superathletes.
I decided I wanted to try one of these
workouts to see what the hype was about.
I start out with a 15-pound bar across my shoulders.
The progression goes like this: upright rows, overhead
press, bench press, triceps, biceps. Oh, and with 15
squats in between each. Do that seven times and see
how you feel. Typical Michael just stands by and
laughs as my breath gets shorter and I glare at him
for convincing me to do this workout. As I finish, 25
minutes later, he says “Hey great job. Next time we
can add weight!”
AThe Gym Rats: Exercising for Academics
A group of students at The Putney School have dubbed themselves the “Gym Rats”
because they are taking part in an experiment to see if periodic exercise throughout the
day helps them with their school work. The experiment is based on Dr. John Ratey’s
book entitled Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
“The book acknowledges how exercise can work in lieu of medications for conditions
like ADHD, which is the focus of this group, but it also works across the board for
depression, anxiety, and stress,” says Michael Chevalier, who directs the 30-minute
workout sessions at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. Michael is a nurse
who works in the health office, but he also serves as the school’s athletic trainer.
As for motivation to implement the program at Putney, swapping, in some cases,
movement for meds, Michael says, “I’ve always been a believer in that and I feel so
strongly about it that I really wanted to jump on board so that students could try
this and see what they think.”
Proposed and funded by a gift from parents of a current student, the regimen
is different from traditional physical education classes and afternoon sports and
activities. It’s a specific set of exercises designed to not only elevate participants’
heart rates for thirty minutes, but to also stimulate the brain to focus by way of
specific drills such as dribbling a basketball with the “wrong” hand, jumping rope,
and other specific movements. Ideally, the program would meet three times per
day—at 7 a.m., 1 p.m., and 7 p.m.—but that just wouldn’t fit into Putney’s day because
so many students have jobs that start at 1 p.m. So the initial schedule included a
3 p.m. workout. “It just didn’t make sense,” says Michael, “because there aren’t any
classes at 3:30 p.m.” Michael keeps the routines fresh. Although some movements
and activities will repeat, Michael says, “We’ve done over 100 sessions and no two
have been alike.”
Official student participants receive afternoon activity credit for the Gym Rats,
but plenty of others drop into classes, as do faculty members. After a recent early
morning session, dean of students Tom Kardel said, “When I leave every morning,
I feel like my day has really begun.”
But does it work for the students? There are currently six students officially enrolled,
including three who remain from the beginning of the program last September.
Flannery ’14, a founding member of the Gym Rats, says, “I was on ADHD meds
before this and I went off of them, and this is basically replacing my meds. It’s doing
the positive things my Adderall did, minus feeling sick all the time and socially
weird—the things that go along with ADHD medication.” Michael reports that one
student turned completely around from failing classes to excelling in them—except
for the Gym Rats sessions. He missed enough of them that he didn’t get credit for
the activity. Those of you who fit under the ADHD umbrella can appreciate how
that can happen.
It’s anecdotal evidence, but there’s a sense that something is working and the word is
spreading among students that there’s another tool for managing ADHD. For a look
at one of our sessions search for “The Putney School: Exercising for Academics with
Michael Chevalier” on our YouTube page.
Putney post 27