When I was accepted to Vassar during the Early Decision II admission cycle, my only other college acceptance at that time was an early action admission to the University of Miami. Attending Miami made a lot of sense. Miami was less than an hour from my home, cheaper than Vassar and my childhood best friend was likely to attend Miami. In many ways, I was presented with a choice between the known and the unknown, between the comfortable and the uncomfortable. But by the time I applied with an acceptance-binding commitment to Vassar, I already knew I wanted to be uncomfortable. I wanted to try something new because I was not fulfilled by what I had come to know as comfort in South Florida.
In this context, attending Vassar was the easiest and best choice I have made to date. Academically, my passion for journalism has sprouted from a childish interest to a passion for the many elements of storytelling and writing artful narrative nonfiction. I got to learn from kind and brilliant professors and classmates alike. Athletically, I accomplished my goal of playing collegiate volleyball at a highly competitive level. And while my pre-college volleyball goals were all about winning games and individual success, I now find myself far prouder of the collective strides we made as a program. As we made three straight NCAA tournament appearances—including two Final Fours—we nurtured a culture of compassion and valiant efforts in the face of adversity. Personally, I have had more fun than ever before while meeting a wealth of awesome people who I am grateful embrace me for who I am.
There is only one lens through which attending Miami made more sense. At Miami, my exposure to sports-specific journalism opportunities would have been far more plentiful. I would have covered major collegiate athletics from the second I arrived on campus. Instantly, I would have accomplished a dream of going from a fan to a credentialed reporter. On the Miami sports beat, I would have formed relationships with the local and national journalists I admire. I would have grown a sports-specific journalism resume exponentially quicker. As I weighed this, however, I found myself prioritizing the realizations I list above. They were only hopes at the time, but I decided I valued pursuing them more than I did immediate career-centered gratification.
As I pursued my own athletic aspirations and sought an academic experience which would later help me as a journalist, I accepted I was placing my sports journalism goals on the back burner. But I also did not want to completely stifle them. That would have been torture. There are few things, if any, which I love more than a good sports story.
I write this retrospective with sincere gratitude to The Miscellany News for providing me with a platform for me to share my passion. Thanks to The Misc, I had a blank canvas for my sports writing, one in which my ideas were always well- received. When I first started to work with The Miscellany News Sports section, it was clear the section lagged behind other sections. Sports had fewer writers and articles, sometimes struggling to even produce a page of work. I was not convinced I could make sports stories matter to The Misc, or to the Vassar community at-large. As I write my final piece in The Misc, I am proud to say the Sports section is now one which enriches our paper on a weekly basis. Along the way, I have taken more joy in writing for the section than I could have anticipated.
I owe a great deal of gratitude to Caris Lee for believing in the vision I had for the section. Caris, a long-time Copy Editor and skilled writer, could have joined any section when she decided she wanted to write more and edit less in the spring of our junior year. Caris saw importance in sports stories, even as someone who had never been a sports aficionado. She wrote numerous excellent articles which demonstrated how sports stories can be interesting beyond a result in an organized match, chronicling many of the intersections between sports and other aspects of life on our campus, and encouraged many writers to do the same. Caris worked with great care for the section and was essential in increasing our output and popularizing writing for Sports.
When I started as Sports Editor, I worried I would be unable to find a successor, but Henry France took great interest in mine and Caris’ efforts from early on. Henry wrote tirelessly for us and has since grown into an excellent Sports Editor, improving the section by finding more writers, more stories and improving the aesthetic of the section with his graphic design abilities. Henry has made the sports section better and more fun, even convincing Casey McMenamin to join the section as an Editor as well. I am thankful to both of them for always thinking about how the section can expand.
I am also thankful to the many editors and writers of other sections who lended their great talent to Sports, especially Allen, Maryam, Charlotte and Jesse for supporting the Sports section in various ways during their time on the upper executive board.
My efforts with the Sports section over the course of my four years were rooted in the belief that sports do not need to be considered incompatible with other aspects of our campus community. When I arrived on campus, I was caught in the crossfires of a rightful hostility towards athletes who were failing to be positive members of our community, some through deplorable actions, and others through a simple indifference towards non-student athletes. My fellow men’s volleyball classmates and I despised this reality, and we set out to exterminate both from our team’s culture. Along the way, many wonderful people have received us with an open-mind because we were open-minded ourselves, and many friendships have been born as a result. Along the way, I have been fortunate to be embraced by the brilliant people who make up The Misc. I hope more student-athletes will take this initiative. I hear there is a great campus Sports section waiting to tell their stories, and a campus community eager to read them.