Montgomery Bell Academy
Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) is a preparatory day school for boys in grades 7 through 12 in Nashville, Tennessee. The school is located in the Whitland Area Neighborhood.[1]
Montgomery Bell Academy
Private all-male college-preparatory
"Fortitudo Per Scientiam."
1866
William H. Daughtrey
7-12
839
Cardinal and Silver
Big Red
Top of the Hill, The Bell Ringer
The Bell
$60 million
Athletics[edit]
Montgomery Bell Academy's sport offerings include football, basketball, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, and more.
The school has won the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association's football championship fourteen times, from 1915 to 2014.[7]
The school has also gained recognition for its Cross Country team. Since its inception in 1995, the team has claimed a total of thirteen state championships.[8] Most notably, the team claimed a perfect sweep in the state championship of 2010, in which all top five places were claimed by the school's runners.[9]
The school's tennis team was able to claim the state title of 2013 over the Gulliver Preparatory School by a margin of 5-to-4.[10] The team also hosts its own tennis tournament each spring, entitled the Francis Carter Invitational.[11]
The MBA Soccer Program is led by the former Coach of Waterford United (Irish Premier League), Giles Cheevers.[12] MBA Soccer captured the 2015 TSSAA Tennessee State Soccer Championship (DII-AA) with a 3-0 win over Christian Brothers High School (CBHS).[13]
Debate and forensics[edit]
In addition to its academics programs, Montgomery Bell Academy has a separate debate and forensics program. The school offers Policy Debate to its students.
Annually, Montgomery Bell Academy hosts its speech and debate tournament, the Southern Bell Forum. The tournament has a unique ranking system, where speaker points are accounted for in the final ranking system.
Visual and performing arts[edit]
The Montgomery Bell Academy theater program has won awards at the Tennessee Theater Association. The school also performs its annual student-directed one-acts in April and May, where it invites the students to write and direct their original scripts. MBA also performs its annual musical with students from the Harpeth Hall School. The high school orchestra is known as the MBA Sinfonia.
In popular culture[edit]
Montgomery Bell Academy graduate Thomas Schulman, class of 1968, wrote the screenplay for the 1989 motion picture Dead Poets Society, which depicts a fictional school patterned after Montgomery Bell Academy. Robin Williams portrayed a character based on Sam Pickering, one of Schulman's teachers during his years at Montgomery Bell Academy.[14]