Lakeside Magazine
“The Education of a Major League Star”
Just a few weeks after playing in the World Series and being named National League Rookie of the Year, Corbin Carroll ’19 took time out from a mid-winter workout back at Lakeside to pose for a few portraits and talk about his unusual — and surprisingly short — path to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball. Drawing from interviews with Carroll’s family, former coaches, teammates, teachers, and members of his new support team as a player for the Arizona Diamondbacks, this issue’s cover story explores that path. The profile reveals a unique individual whose ability to continually become the best version of himself was shaped by his upbringing — and sharpened by his education.
“I want to get a bumper sticker that says MY SON IS AN ARIZONA DIAMONDBACK HONOR STUDENT.”— Pey-Lin Carroll, from “Corbin Carroll’s Superpower”
Elsewhere in the issue
Narrative nonfiction writer Ben Cassidy tells the dramatic story of the Lakeside chess team’s attempt to defend its state high school title — and gives an inside view of a competitive, passionate, and sometimes goofy subculture. The extraordinary depth of this year’s team unexpectedly led to a complicated end game in the final rounds of the 2024 state tournament.
Journalist Wudan Yan offers an appreciation of the annual rummage sale that became a Seattle institution. The fundraiser started as a small “white elephant sale” in the McKay Chapel basement in 1951. By the time the COVID pandemic shut down the sale in 2020, it had grown into a logistically complicated year-round operation depending on its own storage depot and thousands of volunteer hours. The strong sense of community it created along the way was a part of the bargain.
Students in Daren Salter’s Upper School history elective “Protest and Popular Music” put together an annotated playlist of 30 important protest songs in American history. An excerpt from the list appears in the issue on pages 10-11. You can find the full playlist here and listen along on Spotify.
Alumni news in this issue includes scenes from our two newest regional alumni receptions, Boston and Los Angeles. (You can find more photos from those and other gatherings through the alumni event photo albums). Elsewhere, spotlights draw attention to “The Cost of Free Land” by book author Rebecca Clarren ’93 and a pair of in-the-spotlight-already Class of 2023 classmates: TikTok sensation Jon Purcell and K-pop idol Kyrell Choi.
Contributors
Lakeside magazine editor Jim Collins (“Corbin Carroll’s Superpower,” page 22) is a professional magazine editor and writer who occasionally writes about the game of baseball. (He was an infielder in college.) His published articles range from a “LIFE” magazine profile of a Major League umpire to a behind-the-scenes look at the Boston Red Sox marketing machine (for “Boston Magazine”) to an airline-magazine explainer on the differing physics of wooden and metal baseball bats. His 2004 book “The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream” is still in print, in a 10th anniversary edition. He’s the parent of a 2020 Lakeside graduate.
Seattle- and New England-based reporter Benjamin Cassidy (“The Kings and Queens of Lakeside,” page 18) has written and edited longform stories for “Portland Monthly” and “Seattle Met” — a magazine for which he once reported on the emerging chess scene in Seattle’s bars. bybencassidy.com
Wudan Yan (“The Largest Secondhand Sale in the State of Washington,” page 34) describes herself as a “narrative Swiss Army knife: I’m an award-winning narrative journalist, podcast producer, fact-checker, content writer, and media entrepreneur…” Her articles have appeared in “The Atlantic,” “The New Yorker,” “The Guardian,” and “The New York Times,” among other publications. This is her first piece for “Lakeside” magazine. wudanyan.com
Commercial and portrait photographer (and Franklin High School graduate) John Lok (“Corbin Carroll portraits;” cover, pages 22-24; “Class Connections,” page 43) has shot iconic images of Seattle athletes before, including Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson and Corbin Carroll’s childhood hero, baseball star Ichiro Suzuki. johnlokphoto.com
Jordan Kines (“Alumni Events,” page 40) is a Boston-based travel and lifestyle photographer. He broke into the Boston creative scene in 2016 with a stunning bird’s-eye-view video of the city, shot from a helicopter in 4K while he was a student at Emerson College. jordankines.com
Two of the student contributors in this issue, Rohan D. ’25 (“A Blast from the Past,” page 16; “Lakeside’s First Chess Grandmaster,” page 21) and Reagan R. ’25 (“The Truth, Out Loud,” page 50) are Tatler staff members. Rohan serves as the editor of the paper’s Science and Technology section. Reagan is co-editor-in-chief. The accompanying photo was taken in San Francisco in April 2023, at the spring convention of the Journalism Education Association, the country’s largest annual gathering of high school student journalists.
Editor: Jim Collins
Director of Communications: Amanda Darling
Alumni Relations News: Amanda Campbell
Art Director: Carol Nakagawa
Editorial Assistant: Lorelei S. ’25
Copy Editor: Mark Watanabe
Proof Readers: Judy Bauer, Kathleen Triesch Saul
Spring/Summer 2024 issue writers: Kai Bynum, Bryan Chung ’24, Daren Salter, Bill Souser, Mike Lengel, Leslie Schuyler, Rohan D. ’25, Benjamin Cassidy, Jim Collins, Wudan Yan, Rahul Sharma ’24 (poetry), Samara N. ’26, Fiona Linnau ’24, Ursula Collins-Laine, Reagan R. ’25, Charlotte Guyman P ’07 ’09 ’15
Spring/Summer 2024 issue artists and photographers: John Lok, Alice M. ’27, David O. Smith ’04, Rishi Lakshminarayanan ’24, Khalil Wilkinson ’24, Jane Ridgeway ’05, Fred Birchman, Mike Lengel, Lia S. ’25, Rayhan Mundra ’24, Jordan Kines, Glenn Harris
Lakeside magazine is published twice yearly, in winter and summer, by the communications office of Lakeside School. To view past issues, visit us on issuu.
Circle of Excellence Awards from the Council for Advancement & Support of Education
| 2023 | Independent and International School Alumni Magazines GOLD MEDAL |
| Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year FINALIST |
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| 2022 | Single-Topic Issue, Case District VIII GOLD MEDAL “Black @ Lakeside” |
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