ELI WEISSLER
Senior, The Field School
DURING ELI WEISSLER'S SOPHOMORE YEAR, he noticed that a younger teammate on the basketball team lacked self-confidence on the court. Eli, who lives in Chevy Chase and was team captain that year, began staying after practice to help the boy. Two years later, Eli proudly notes that the boy is now one of the team’s top players.
“People have helped me along, so I try to return the favor whenever I can,” says Eli, 18, who is captain of the cross-country and basketball teams this school year.
Eli, who has a 4.21 GPA (on a 4.3 scale) and scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT, brings that same spirit to everything he does. At his school’s Peer Tutoring Center, which he runs, Eli helps classmates with everything from trigonometry to writing a thesis. “It’s a little weird tutoring people your age at first,” he says. “But I make jokes and let them know I’m teaching in a different way.”
Jordi Rozenman, a college counselor at The Field School, says Eli’s teachers rely on him as a “second teacher in the classroom.”
“He packs a double punch: He excels at everything he does, but he’s genuinely kind and puts others at ease,” she says.
Eli says some of his classmates think that asking for help is a sign of weakness. He felt that way himself before finding that his English papers improved dramatically after he started asking someone to read them. He was even more reluctant to ask his basketball coach for help when he first began playing, but soon realized he’d never get better without it.
“I’m not going to be a Division I [college] athlete, but I work hard and I’m a quiet person—I like to lead by example,” Eli says.
Photos by Michael Ventura
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