Kyle Ando ’26 lost his father in 2019 and came to Endicott still grieving.
As an exercise science major and former member of the men’s lacrosse team, he found a sense of belonging almost immediately.
“If you’re on a sports team here, you automatically have 50 friends,” Ando explained. The team became his family—and the following year, when his younger brother, Marcus Ando ’27, came to Endicott and joined the men’s lacrosse program as a student assistant coach and manager, the team became his family, too.
“I want to recognize Coach Hagarty, Coach Dean, and our trainer, Shelby Barden, for giving me the opportunity to play the sport that I love and to make lifelong friends with my teammates. I’m forever thankful,” Ando said.
Ando’s father, Yoshitaka Ando, a beloved athletic trainer at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School for 33 years, was also his youth lacrosse coach. Ando remembers being eight or nine years old and hearing his dad’s whistle during a game. The next thing he knew, he was pulled off the field, and his dad told him bluntly that his stick skills needed work.
Later that day, they practiced in their backyard until Ando completed 100 passes and catches. It was tedious, but it ultimately taught him a valuable lesson about the philosophy that his dad lived by: “Such is life.”
It was a phrase that his dad repeated a little too often. But eventually the intention behind it became clear: “What he meant is that things inevitably do not go your way in life,” Ando said. “It’s important to be resilient.”
The words became his motto. Ando not only wrote his Endicott admissions essay about it, but also got it tattooed on his arm in Japanese as a reminder in class, on the field, and while traveling around the world.
Ando’s mother is from Marlborough, Mass., where he was raised, and even though his dad had immigrated from Japan to Massachusetts as a teen, he didn’t speak Japanese with Ando and his three siblings and rarely told stories about his childhood.
Sophomore year, Ando started taking Japanese classes at Endicott to connect with that side of his identity. When his mentor Warren Jaferian, Dean of Global Education, told him about a two-week study tour to Japan focused on exploring the country’s business environment and culture, Ando jumped at the chance.
“It was the best time of my life,” he said. “I understood a lot more about my dad after I visited Japan. Learning about the cultural values there made my dad make sense in a whole new way.”
He also met Japanese relatives in person for the first time in Yokohama, where his father was born. He went on to spend the fall of junior year studying abroad in Madrid.
Back on campus, during his semester-long internship junior year, he worked at Orthopaedics Plus Physical Therapy, a physical therapy clinic in Beverly, where he gained experience bringing patients in from the office waiting room, listening to their concerns, and starting their initial exercises for the day before the physical therapist came to deliver treatment.
“It was by far my most rewarding internship,” Ando said. “Everything came together in terms of putting into play what I had been learning in my exercise science classes. I realized then that in my career I need to be working directly with patients and that’s what led me to nursing.”
At the clinic, patients with arthritis would often come in for therapy while in excruciating pain. Listening to them made Ando want to learn more about how to help, ultimately inspiring his thesis, which examines the connection between emotional well-being and arthritis.
“I’m interviewing people with arthritis about coping mechanisms and how they maintain their positive mindset and sense of self-worth with this chronic disease that affects more than 55 million Americans,” he explained. Along the way, he’s worked closely with Marisa Mickey, Associate Professor of Sport Science. “Her numerous courses and advising have been a huge help.”
Next year, Ando plans to follow in his mom’s footsteps and begin an accelerated nursing program. He finds meaning working with children and hopes to go into pediatrics.
“My main takeaway is that I just want to be able to make an impact with the same breadth that my dad did,” he said, adding, “but in my own way.”