Full Great Women Great Danes Interview Transcript
UAlbany's Great Women Great Danes is a new series that will be published during Women's History Month. The series will feature Great Danes, past and present, and celebrate the women of UAlbany.
Q: Can you tell me about your student athlete experience so far?
A: I’m in my fifth year here at UAlbany. Fifth and final year - got one more season left. It’s hard to believe it’s gone so fast. I mean, coming here … I was a completely different person. And, COVID was definitely a bump in the road in the middle of [my career] but I’m really thankful that it happened because otherwise I wouldn’t have been here for a fifth year. It’s really nice to have that experience and to be able to do all three seasons is awesome, too.
Q: Yeah, you guys kind of get the – some would say perks, some would say cons of three seasons of college sports. So, can you tell me about your journey as a distance runner?
A: When I was a freshman, I came in just kind of enjoying myself … just there for the ride. I think my best cross country time was probably like 18:44 coming in or something like that. Now, my best cross country time is 18:10 but on the track I’ve run 17:46 for 5k. So, I have improved. But I’d say I’ve definitely had setbacks and jumps forward. My sophomore year, I was really not feeling good and I didn’t know what was going on. And, [it turns out] I had really low ferritin. I wasn’t anemic, but I had no iron stores, basically. So, I ended up … all I needed was supplements and I was fine. But basically, I was breaking even in terms of iron. It wasn’t like … I wasn’t digging into my actual iron … it was normal but low, but I had nothing stored up. So, during practice, I would be feeling great on the warmup and then as soon as we had a workout or run or something, I’d start feeling exhausted. Even in lift, I would get light-headed just from lifting because I had no idea. Then once I took the supplements and everything, I was fine. I was PRing. It was good.
Q: That’s great! Looking at your career, you’ve been a consistent competitor for the Great Danes but you’ve never been the number one runner. What does it mean that you are able to consistently show up for your team? And also, what would you say to someone who maybe is in a similar position where they’re constantly competing, they’re constantly at the top of the team, but they’re not number one?
A: I think as one of my favorite pro runners, Des Linden, says, ‘keep showing up’. And that’s a motto I always live by. It doesn’t matter if you’re first or second or last - it’s a race against yourself. So, even if you’re not number one on the team, if you’re still beating your own times and improving, then that’s what really matters. A river doesn’t cut through rock because it’s powerful, it cuts through rock because it’s persistent. So, you just have to be persistent.
Q: That is a great saying! On top of being an athlete, on top of consistently competing for the team, you are very involved in the campus and off campus community. Can you tell me about what you do?
A: Right now, I’m the president of SAAC. I started off as your regular representative my sophomore or junior year, and then I moved up to vice president my senior year. And now I’m the president. And that’s been a really interesting journey just to grow through the stages. I’m also a campus captain for The Hidden Opponent, which is a student-athlete mental health advocacy group. They do some activities with Title IX and bond by sharing each other’s stories. It’s kind of built a community among the campus captains. Right now, we’re working to get it as an official club on campus so that we can bring more people in so it’s not just the campus captains. That’s been really rewarding, as well. Being there for the community, and giving back to the community that’s made me the person I am, has always been really rewarding.
Q: Can you tell me a little more about what it entails to be the SAAC President?
A: Basically, you’re in charge of each meeting. You make the agenda and you delegate tasks to other e-board members. I’m also in charge of planning and organizing the programming that we do … whether that’s the fundraising with the cornhole tournament for the regional food bank or our upcoming dodgeball tournament to raise money for Friends of Jacqueline. You’re just coordinating everything and working with the other e-board members to get everything to run nice and smoothly.
Q: You also said you’re a Hidden Opponent campus captain. It seems like that kind of just blossomed this year. From what I hear, you’re one of the few people who helped get it off the ground. Can you tell me a little about that experience?
A: I’ve actually been a campus captain for … this will be my third year. We recently had a lot of the girls on the softball team join as campus captains, as well. It’s been a big help to have other people involved, too, because when it’s just yourself, it’s hard to get anything rolling. But now that we have, I think it’s five or six of us, seven of us now, it’s a lot easier to work with other people to get it off the ground. All of us are working hard to get it through with the student association so that we can get it as an official club. That way we can get a little more funding to do more events and more mental health awareness games and stuff like that.
Q: So, you’re involved in the community, you are an athlete, and you’re in your master’s program after graduating summa cum laude. How do you handle it all?
A: Well, that’s a good question. Honestly, it’s just about time management. You have to make sacrifices. Sure, I do all those things. I might not have much of a social life, but I get a lot done. And again, it’s all about you keep showing up, you keep being persistent, and you do things that you love and that you know are going to give back to the people that helped you get to where you are. And just focusing on the goal ahead and working towards your dreams, basically.
Q: Can you tell me what you want to do after you graduate?
A: After I finish my master’s, I plan on going to medical school. I really do want to be a doctor. I’ve wanted to be one … gosh, probably since I was in like, second or third grade. And, I’ve strayed from it, but I always end up coming back to medicine and wanting to be a doctor. I’m not really sure exactly what kind of specialty I’d want to do. I mean, I’ve dabbled in thinking, ‘oh, maybe I’d want to be a pediatrician, or maybe I’d want to do sports medicine or emergency medicine’. I think I really need to experience things in medical school and see what works best for me. But yeah, I want to go on to medical school and be a physician. And, I think my public health background with this master’s is really going to help, especially since there’s a lot of problems with the medical system and the health care system that we learn about in our public health classes. Being able to address those issues and be able to think –‘I know what those problems are, so I can work to make a change’ … it might not work with just me, but if I can educate my peers in the future, then we can again work together to make a change.
Q: Do you think that your time as a student-athlete had had anything to do with what you want to do for a career?
A: Yeah, absolutely. I think … I mean, being a student-athlete has made me incredibly disciplined, and I don’t think I’ve ever done school without having a sport. Before I ran, I did gymnastics in elementary school and middle school. I think sports and academics have always gone hand-in-hand for me. So, it’ll be a big change next year when I’m not on a team, because I still have one more year of my masters to do … but I am still gonna run. I just think sports and academics have always gone together, and I know that giving back … like I said, I have thought about doing sports medicine, and just being able to kind of give back to the athletic community in that way too, would be really great experience.
Q: Do I hear a student assistant coach in your future?
A: Oh yeah, I’m anticipating doing that as well next year. So that’ll be a fun time too, I think. I’m excited for that because it’s a good way … we talk about this a lot, with the Hidden Opponent is how student-athletes are … once you’re done with your eligibility, you’re just kind of done, and it’s an abrupt kind of stop. I think being able to assistant coach next year will be a great way to ease out of competing for the school, but still being able to be like a member of the team, and still being there with my teammates.
Q: I understand that - like it’s hard to cut that former life off.
A: Yeah … and that’s, I mean, that’s a lot of the issue with student-athlete mental health. Let’s say you’re in your last season, like I am, that’s a big, scary, looming thing. It’s like, ‘okay, well I’m not an athlete anymore, here’s real life.’ So, if you have a way that you can kind of easily segway out of it, so you’re not just immediately, like, cold turkey done. There’s a big difference in that. And I think that really that’ll be a good experience for me.
Q: How did the women around you help you to become the athlete and person you are today?
A: Oh, I like this question. So, like I said before, I did gymnastics when I was younger, and I hated running. I hated it. Never wanted to do it. Nope, wasn’t for me … that was my older sister’s thing. I have three siblings, but my oldest sister, she’s 14 years older than me, she ran for URI, and she was pretty good. She was, like their team MVP for their cross country team and everything. I kind of grew up going to her track meets, so I knew that I could do it, because I knew if she could do it, I could run too, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t like it. And then, I ended up quitting gymnastics and I thought, ‘well, what am I gonna do now?’ I’m not gonna not do a sport, I have too much energy for that. So, I thought, well if Katherine ran track and cross country, and the track and cross country coaches have been bugging me to join the team, I’ll give it a shot. I think she really inspired me to start running and to continue running. She still runs now. We’re actually gonna be training for a marathon together this summer, so that’ll be fun. And then, my mom was born with hip dysplasia so she couldn’t run, but she has that fighting spirit, that persistence, and that really stuck on me. And my grandmother, she actually was born in a time way before Title IX, so there was no such thing as sports for her. But, she loved running. She would race the boys around the block in elementary school and middle school. She was a speed demon, but she had no opportunity [to run in college]. I think that now, being able to have that opportunity and embrace the things that my family may not have been able to do, has been really, really incredible.
Q: You’ve had all this success in your early adult life. What does it mean and how does it feel that young women and girls may look up to you because of it?
A: I think it’s always been in the back of my mind that somebody’s looking up to me. I have a niece - she’s a year old now - so she’s not exactly looking up to me just yet, but as she gets older, it’ll be cool to kind of introduce her to sport. Even in high school, I had teammates who were a little bit younger than me. They always looked up to me, and I felt like, ‘okay, I have to be this great role model.’ I had such great role models in my life, so, I knew I just had to be half the person that they were for these girls below me, and they’ll carry on the tradition. It’s always been kind of rewarding to be someone that people look up to, especially since I had such great role models.
Q: What does Women’s History Month mean to you?
A: Ooh, Women’s History Months means to me that we have to look back at the accomplishments of our peers and the women that really paved the road for us. I always like to say, they had to walk so we could run – no pun intended. I think it’s just being able to look back at how much women have changed the world, and how much we can continue to change the world. We make a big difference, and we’re not going anywhere, so [we] might as well keep up the big changes.
For more interviews from the Women's History Month #GreatWomenGreatDanes series, click here.
