Nearing the End

I sit here, staring at my planner, distracted. Anyone who knows me relatively well knows one thing for sure - I tend to be pretty well organized. And for some reason I sit here, attempting to plan out my week, and I can’t seem to focus. Instead, I flip ahead - April, May, June. That’s …

Trials and Tribulations of Club Sports

While most people take spring break as a time to kick back from classes, partying it up on one of the many warm beaches a short plane ride away, I choose the more traditional route of spending my final college spring break with family.  This, of course, afforded me the option of passing my usual …

The Female Athlete Reality

Every job, title and role comes with its fair share of balancing good and bad. Manipulating the pros to outweigh the cons, the pluses to the minuses, all to find the happy medium where we reach satisfaction. Being a female athlete has its own challenges. While I am extremely thankful to have the opportunity to …

More Than Volleyball

It’s easy to stress about job qualifications when you have no internships or ~real~ work experience.  Your resume appears as empty as ever. I’m right in the middle of this conundrum. Between rewriting resumes, searching for jobs, and trying to actually decide what to do with the rest of my life (or at least this …

The Starting Feeling

Nobody’s prepared you for this moment. Nobody’s told you how it feels. Which is okay, though, because in some peculiar way you’ve prepared for it. You’re nervous. Really nervous. But, like, the good kind of nervous. You’re excited because you’ve never done this before: you’ve never started. As a walk-on and non-starter, it’s routine to …

It’s What We Do … (or Why Being a Parent is a Chore)

After many hours spent at airports this weekend, I tried to maximize my time by attempting to write my blog for this week. Sometimes, the words just don’t arrive.  And so I asked my dad for some help. He offered to guest write again. The rest is history:   “When dealing with people, remember you …

Food is Fuel

An assortment of food sits in front of you. What do you choose? Burrito? Burger? Stir Fry? Or that grilled chicken with vegetables? What about dessert? Ice cream? Cake? Cookies? Candy? Fruit instead? The infamous “freshman fifteen” is no lie. Living in the dorms, with a variety of options at your disposal, it’s easy to …

Getting Involved

A few weeks ago, I attended an event hosted by the University of Oregon where student-athletes dined together to learn etiquette. While it seems obscure and out of the ordinary, this event introduced me to fellow student athletes I would not typically meet. And so I met a freshman football player sitting at our senior …

The Walk-on Resilience

* Walk-On: Student athletes who are not recruited or receive an athletic scholarship * Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness ______________________________________________________________________________ This weekend, I had the pleasure of hearing from Holly Rowe. Most noted for her success as a college football sideline reporter for ESPN, Holly shared with the female student-athletes of …

Managing Social Media

My grandmother once told me a story about being mindful of my actions. My Dad had done something in his early teens that was a bit embarrassing for the family, but made for some great teaching moments. But I always remembered her saying that I need to be aware of my actions – they don’t …