{"id":25374,"date":"2010-04-21T12:02:56","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=25374"},"modified":"2016-02-01T11:45:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T16:45:43","slug":"great-performances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2010\/04\/21\/great-performances\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Performances"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mcneil-sports-spring2010-8795\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the arts stage or in the throwing circle, Rich McNeil \u201910 is a crowd-pleaser<\/h3>\n

By Andy Walter
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Where Rich McNeil \u201910 sees harmony, others might find dissonance. \u201cI love telling people that I sing and I just tackled you,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Back in 2006, his Massachusetts hometown newspaper used the headline \u201cRenaissance man\u201d to describe McNeil, at the time a standout performer in football and track and field at St. John\u2019s Prep. This boy is not your average jock, said the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune<\/em>. He\u2019s a singer, a songwriter, a cook. He\u2019s been ballet-dancing since he was 4. (Transfixed by his older sister Alana\u2019s ballet class, he wanted to start at age 3 but was deemed too young.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI do things most kids don\u2019t do,\u201d he told the paper.<\/p>\n

Now in his last semester at Bates, McNeil has been a three-year Bobcat starter at defensive end in football. He\u2019s a two-time (and counting) All-American thrower in track and field. At this writing, in mid-February, his immediate goals include competing at the indoor (March 12\u201314) and outdoor (May 27\u201329) NCAA Championships.<\/p>\n

A music major, McNeil was also prepping for another performance shortly after the indoor NCAA meet: his senior thesis recital, on March 21, in which he\u2019ll sing a selection of Vaughan Williams songs.<\/p>\n

He looks back at the Eagle-Tribune\u2019s \u201cRenaissance man\u201d moniker with a shrug. While the boundary between music and athletics is a \u201clittle hard to cross,\u201d he says, \u201cBates is filled with kids like me. The days of the jock who does only one thing have changed, especially in Division III. You hear about the outside linebacker who plays the piano. That stuff is becoming the norm.\u201d (In fact, Bates statistics show that varsity athletes are only slightly less likely to major in one of the performing arts than nonathletes.)<\/p>\n

McNeil comes from a family where athletics and the arts have always been in sync. His mother, June Kfoury McNeil, is an accomplished singer and actress; his father, Bryan McNeil, is a baritone who has performed a host of roles with the likes of the Boston Lyric Opera. (His booming rendition of \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d prior to the Bates-Bowdoin football game last fall could be heard from Russell Street to Campus Avenue.)<\/p>\n

Both parents were athletes, too. Bryan, the family trailblazer when it came to combining tough-guy sports with the arts, once threw the shot put an impressive 52 feet, 6 inches. Rich is closing in on Dad: his personal best is 51 feet, 3 inches, recorded at the Maine State Meet in February, where he won the Peter Goodrich \u201989 Award as the outstanding field performer.<\/p>\n

His danseur<\/em> days, meanwhile, are quickly receding into the past. \u201cReality sets in,\u201d he smiles.<\/p>\n

Some of the many passions Rich juggled as a teenager have cooled, temporarily anyway. He loves to cook, but his primary culinary artistic outlet these days is constructing perfect sandwiches at New Commons. He hasn\u2019t written many songs during college, but he\u2019d like to revisit the ballads he penned as a teenager and \u201cmake them not sound like they\u2019re written by a high school kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

His danseur<\/em> days, meanwhile, are quickly receding into the past. \u201cReality sets in,\u201d he smiles. \u201cA 240-pound ballet dancer is not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, ballet training left its imprint on McNeil\u2019s other athletic pursuits, helping with body control but initially impairing his throwing technique, specifically the rapid spinning motion that a hammer, weight, or discus thrower makes in the circle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you do a ballet turn, you keep your eyes fixed on your \u2018spot point.\u2019 Then you whip your head around quickly and refocus on the same spot,\u201d McNeil explains. Throwing the weight and hammer requires the opposite technique. As the thrower spins around faster and faster right before the toss, the head should turn with the body.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t easy for McNeil to shed his ballet-influenced throwing style. One day, a frustrated Joe Woodhead, Bates\u2019 longtime throwing coach, barked at his young thrower: \u201cWhy won\u2019t you change!?\u201d So McNeil explained his 14 years of ballet training. \u201cI said that we kind of do [turns] that way. Coach and I had a battle,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music never ends with Rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musically, McNeil is considered a gifted lyric tenor, and he sings in the College Choir and plays in the Steel Pan Orchestra and with friends in the Village Concert Series. In fact, \u201cRich never stops singing,\u201d laments roommate Chris Murtagh \u201911, a football and track teammate with McNeil at St. John\u2019s and now at Bates.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sings in the shower. He sings in the room,\u201d Murtagh adds. \u201cHe has this habit of immediately starting to sing any song he happens to hear. The music never ends with Rich.\u201d Which is true, as McNeil hopes to combine his music and athletic interests into a post-Bates teaching and coaching job.<\/p>\n

For his senior thesis recital, McNeil will perform a selection of Vaughan Williams songs based on the \u201cSongs of Travel\u201d by Robert Louis Stevenson. The selection \u201cshows his voice off to good advantage,\u201d says McNeil\u2019s faculty adviser, Jim Parakilas, the James L. Moody, Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re songs he really cares about, and I think he\u2019ll sing them beautifully. Rich has a very natural delivery, and he\u2019s very comfortable on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t tell McNeil to \u201cbreak a leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s already done something like that, suffering a broken foot during practice last year, just four days before the first indoor meet. The injury wiped out McNeil\u2019s 2009 indoor season, and many expected his 2009 outdoor season to be little more than a glorified rehab stint.<\/p>\n

But McNeil qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in the hammer and, at the meet, performed well enough to advance to the final round, where each thrower gets three attempts.<\/p>\n

McNeil\u2019s first two throws were around 171 feet, leaving him lodged in ninth place, one spot from winning All-America honors. \u201cRich had just one opportunity to move up,\u201d says head coach Al Fereshetian. \u201cYou put him on that stage and he just rises to the occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNeil\u2019s final throw was 172 feet, 11 inches, good for All-American honors.<\/p>\n

It was more than just a good throw, says Fereshetian. \u201cIt was a performance, and that\u2019s what he does well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the arts stage or in the throwing circle, Rich McNeil \u201910…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,24],"tags":[10856,2327,6135],"class_list":["post-25374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-athletics","tag-bates-magazine","tag-class-of-2010","tag-music-tag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25374"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88007,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25374\/revisions\/88007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}