11/21/2025

Gevvie Stone, The Winsor School

Dr. Genevra Stone was, in her own words, a nerd. If you told that young student arriving at Winsor School for fifth grade that she would walk out of those doors and earn an Olympic Silver medal she would have said that’s highly improbable.

“I was not an athlete at all,” said Stone, a 2003 graduate of Winsor and the 2025 Martin William Souders Memorial Award recipient. “I played town soccer, but that was it. I walked into Winsor with no athletic expectations whatsoever, and the environment was such that you were just expected to work hard, set your sights high, and everyone would support you in your path to success.”

Karen Geromini, former Director of Athletics and current Chief Operating Officer at Winsor agreed.

“Gevvie was a bookworm,” Geromini said. “We had a lot of different offerings so students could really try any sport they wanted and she tried a whole lot of different sports. Then she got to high school and could try rowing and here we are!”

That path to success in Stone’s life truly began at Winsor where she learned two things that would inform the rest of her life: rowing and science. The first would lead her to multiple world championship and Olympic competitions while the second led her to pursue a career in medicine.

Both on the water and in the classroom, Stone consistently mentioned the learning environment Winsor fostered and how it brought out the best in her.

“We were having dance parties at the boathouse every day,” Stone recalls. “Rarely was there much complaining about things like carrying down launch engines. Practice was so fun and the whole time we were pushing our physical limits on the water, while enjoying each other and what everyone brought to the team while we were off it.”

Helping create that atmosphere was the team’s coach, and Stone’s mother, former Olympic rower Lisa Hansen. Hansen’s coaching combined with the team dynamics and ability in the boat for Winsor led to the school’s Youth 4+ entrant in the 2002 Head of the Charles to take first place in the high school division, marking the first of many individual and team accolades for Stone.

Upon graduating from Winsor, Stone matriculated at Princeton University and helped her 2005 and 2006 Championship 8+ crews take first place in Boston. To this point Stone had followed in both of her parents’ footsteps for so long that the next logical step was the Olympics.

“In a way I didn’t appreciate how difficult it was to become part of a college rowing team because both of my parents and many of their friends were from that world,” Stone recalls. “So in a similar sense, because both my parents had rowed in the Olympics I had no real appreciation for what it took to row in the Olympics.”

Stone recalls walking into the locker room at Princeton and hearing a teammate talking about their experience at the Junior World Championships and rowing on the Olympic course at Athens and realizing that there were so many others out there with the same goal. Following her junior and senior years, she won gold at the Under-23 World Championships and was invited to the Team USA camp ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

“That was the first time in my life that I was training full-time with no academic responsibilities and it was hard on my body, on my mind – for the first time I felt like the slow one,” Stone recalls. “It is very hard – I would actually say nearly impossible – to achieve at a high level when you don’t believe in yourself.”

Geromini and current Director of Athletics Sherren Granese recalled Stone describing the training “like a science project, from how and when she trained to what she ate to how and when she slept was detailed and exact.”

Stone would miss out on the 2008 Beijing Olympic team and over the next few years would balance competitive rowing with periods of time in medical school. She rowed in the 2011 World Championships but did not reach a qualifying place in the single. She was able to overcome that final hurdle by claiming a spot in the 2012 London Olympics at the Last Chance Regatta.

“There had been so many ups and downs, but getting to compete at the Olympics was a dream come true, literally.”

Stone would go on to qualify for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics as well, peaking in 2016’s games in Rio De Janeiro with a Silver Medal in the Single Sculls. When the 2020 games were postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stone realized that she had postponed many elements of her own life in service of the sport she loved and decided that after the Tokyo Games the time was right to step away.

With a renewed focus on life off the water, Stone has gone on to flourish in her chosen field of medicine, completing a residency in emergency medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a fellowship in sports medicine at the University of Utah. She currently practices emergency medicine in addition to sports medicine with Cambridge Health Alliance.

Reflecting on her journey, Dr. Stone is quick to reiterate how thankful she is for the environment Winsor provided for her as a young athlete.

“Winsor made it fun to play sports, no matter your technical ability. I developed into an athlete largely because of that environment. I certainly did not identify as an athlete when I went in as a fifth grader, but I certainly identified as one when I left as a senior.”

For Geromini, Stone represents the best outcome any coach or administrator could ask for.

“When people gain the success that she has in all facets of life, you really hope that deep down they’re good, quality people,” Geromini said. “Good souls. Caring, empathetic, compassionate souls. And that is Gevvie, the complete package.”

Bryant McBride, Williston Northampton School

Many independent school stories begin the same way: A student, eager to challenge themselves, enters 9th grade on a new campus with ambitious goals for the next four years. For others, however, the tale does not begin until after they have already graduated from high school but nonetheless feel there is more to learn before embarking on the next phase of their life.

The latter is the story of how 2025 Martin William Souders Memorial Award recipient Bryant McBride came to enroll at Williston Northampton School in the fall of 1983 and begin a 40-year relationship with what has become a home away from home.

“In 41 years I have not gone a month without speaking to someone from Williston, and I was only there for one year,” McBride said. “That one year had such a profound impact on my life, on my career. It allowed me to stretch and think about what’s possible, what’s attainable.”

Originally from Chicago, McBride’s family relocated to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario when he was five years old and a lifelong love affair with ice hockey began. From the Esposito brothers to a young Wayne Gretzky, McBride had a front-row seat to high level hockey and felt the weight of expectation that came with being from this cradle of on-ice excellence.

Upon graduating from high school McBride found himself in Easthampton with a recommendation from the United States Military Academy at West Point. With that lying ahead of him, McBride was able to take on all that Williston had to offer.

“Ray Brown, my soccer coach, and Al Shaylor, my track coach – I had never run track before – just pushed me to do more. I had never run track before, but ended up with a couple of records that stood for years. And with [coach Bob Shaw] and hockey, we had a rink on campus. We practiced every day. That just totally changed my game, what I could do, what I was capable of,” McBride recalled.

Under Brown, McBride earned All-WNEPSSA All-Star honors as a midfielder before helping the Wildcats reach the New England tournament with his tough checking and relentless play in Lossone Rink. After completing his post graduate year, he matriculated at West Point with the intention of competing for the Cadets’ soccer and ice hockey teams before a devastating injury forced him to change course. He would be named the Academy’s first black Class President in 1995 before transferring to Trinity College and helping the Bantams win a trio of NESCAC titles.

Unable to stay away from the sport he loved for long, McBride rose to the rank of Vice President for Business Development for the National Hockey League in 1991 and served in that role for nine years. During that time he was the league’s highest-ranking black executive and founded the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force, now known as Hockey is for Everyone. He also began a relationship with Willie O’Ree, the league’s first black athlete, that led to O’Ree being named the league’s Diversity Ambassador and later an award-winning documentary called “Willie” that McBride produced.

“If I had to pick one thing that Williston taught me and really just hammered home, it would be that bringing your best and competing at all times is the standard, it’s what’s expected of everyone. So you have to take the opportunity to raise your level and make an impact and help others. The seeds of that attitude were planted at Williston through the coaching I received and the relationships I formed in that one year.”

Now McBride finds himself back on campus at Williston several times a year in a new capacity: a member of the Board of Trustees.

“It is such a special place in my heart,” McBride said of Williston. “Every time I am back – without fail – I feel rejuvenated. The whole area, but that place in particular – the people, the kids – just never fails to charge my battery.”

An avid runner, McBride has also been a member of the New York Runners Board since 1992 and in that time has helped the running club grow from more than 10,000 members to just over 100,000 with $100 million in revenue. He has run 26 marathons, taught courses at Trinity, MIT, and Harvard, and will have a TED Talk debuting in December of 2025.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Please view the photo gallery here.

Please view the 2025 program here.

Please view the 2025 NEPSAC Annual Meeting website here.

Please view all award winners here.

Awards ceremony will be coming soon.