Full Great Women Great Danes Interview Transcript
UAlbany's Great Women Great Danes is a 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: What is it like being on the same team as your sister?
Julianne: Honestly, it's a really amazing experience. Getting to share the field with my best friend every single day is a dream come true for me.
Rylee: Yeah, honestly, I think it makes this whole experience a lot easier because we’re there for each other to celebrate our highs and get each other through our lows and I think that just makes this whole experience a lot easier.
Julianne: And it made it such an easier transition coming from high school to college because I have this person who's like my built-in best friend for life - Jenna is our other built-in best friend … that's how we describe being a triplet when anyone asks us - it's literally like you have a sleepover with two of your greatest friends every day for the rest of your life. Having her here, my best friend, made that whole transition so much easier and so much more enjoyable.
Rylee: Yeah, I agree.
Q: When you both made the decision to come to UAlbany, was that something you did on purpose or was it just a coincidence? I mean I know you said Jenna. And I actually didn’t know her name,
Rylee: It was a coincidence, honestly. Julianne committed here first, and it was like a couple months before I committed here. We always said growing up, it's either all three together or all three separate. We couldn’t do [two to one school and one to a different school].
Julianne: Yeah, we said it would just not be fair and it wouldn't be fun that way.
Rylee: And then …
Julianne: Jenna committed our sophomore year in high school way earlier than us. She just fell in love with [Ohio State] and the team atmosphere up there so we were ecstatic for her when she committed. Rylee and I didn't end up committing until our senior year in high school.
Rylee: Because of COVID. It pushed everything back.
Julianne: I committed first and UAlbany was one of the schools that Rylee was looking at and it just ended up …
Rylee: It just kind of worked out.
Julianne: It worked out in our favor, I guess.
Rylee: I couldn't be happier honestly.
Julianne: I couldn't be happier either. The only thing that would make it sweeter is if Jenna was here. We've been fortunate that we get to play Ohio State. We got to play them our sophomore year and we get to play them next year, so that'll be really cool.
Q: Have you guys always competed on the same teams?
Julianne: Yeah.
Q: For everything?
Rylee: For everything.
Julianne: Every sport, every team we've been on, we've been on the same team.
Q: That includes Jenna?
Julianne: Yeah, that includes Jenna. All three of us.
Q: How is it different now that you guys are here at UAlbany and she is at Ohio State?
Julianne: Oohh, I don't know, it's funny because our senior year, we had like our last travel field hockey game with the three of us playing together on the same field on the same team and that moment was kind of a big for all of us. Rylee and I were going to play together and now we're never going to play with Jenna in that way again, but it's been cool. Her having her own thing and us being here with each other, it's just how we support each other in so many different ways. It would have been different if we were all in the same team but watching her grow and do her own thing over there has been a really cool thing to support and watch.
Rylee: And the same for us - she's been supporting us through all of it too.
Julianne: It's definitely different than when we're all together, but I think it's something we … it's taken a lot to adjust to because you grow up living in the same house with the two people and you spend every single day together - like I said earlier, it's like a sleepover every night and it's so much fun and it's so cool. So, it was definitely a tough adjustment having her not here with us and her being by herself and not having us there. But it's one that we've adapted to pretty well.
Q: What was it like growing up spending that amount of time with uh two people - someone that you went to practice with every day and someone you went home with every day, someone that you were never apart from every day - can you tell me a little bit about that?
Rylee: I loved it.
Julianne: Yeah, I loved it too. A lot of people … we get this question a lot. People are like you guys spend so much time with each other, doing everything together, sports-wise, school-wise, we have the same friend group, and everybody always asks if we get annoyed with each other. *smile* They wonder how we don’t get in fights all of the team. Our answer baffles everyone - we don't fight.
Rylee: But, we also just don't know any different. We've grown up, the three of us doing everything together since we were little and so for us that's just all we know.
Julianne: That's our norm.
Rylee: Yeah, that's our normal so we're used to it. The most common question we get when we meet people – they always say, “I've never met triplets before. This is the first for me … do you guys fight?”
Julianne: It's always the first question. *both laugh*
Rylee: We don’t fight. We never have.
Julianne: I mean, obviously, siblings fight in their own respectful ways, but we don't fight, we just all get along, we all click like that. It's so cool.
For more content from the Women's History Month #GreatWomenGreatDanes series, click here.
