We talked with four senior student athletes from four different teams at Vassar. Jacob Sellitti on Men’s track and field, Lindsey Nihei on women’s soccer, Addie Lee on men’s baseball and Sierra McDermed on women’s basketball. In last week’s issue, we highlighted the stories of Sellitti and Nihei growing to be integral leaders on their teams. This week, we tell the stories of Lee and McDermed and their experiences under shifting team dynamics while at Vassar.
The career of Addie Lee ’26 has overlapped with an inflection point for the Vassar Baseball program. The right-handed pitcher from Manhattan Beach, California has played for three separate head coaches in his time in Poughkeepsie and has seen the program move in a new direction under Head Coach Tad Skelley. Historically, the Brewers baseball team has not enjoyed much success, and Lee knew this during the recruiting process. However, Lee was drawn to Vassar because of the high academic standing of the school and the opportunity to change the baseball program for the better. “I thought my career here would be pretty successful,” he said, “and I was really hoping to be a part of what turned the team around.”
During Lee’s first year at Vassar, the Brewers won a program record 20 games, including a first-ever sweep over conference foe Union College. Lee pitched in 11 games that season, throwing a 5.40 earned-run-average (ERA) and striking out 48 batters. After the season, the tide seemed to turn against the Brewers. The starting lineup lost key senior players, including All-Liberty League First Team outfielder Andrew Kanellis ’23 and catcher Adam Talwalkar ’23. Then, Head Coach Matthew Righter moved on from Vassar, marking the first coaching change of Lee’s career after just his first year. The following season, the team battled to a 12-21 record under Interim Head Coach Blayne Fuke. Lee started eight games that year and pitched seven shutout innings in a win over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, ultimately finishing his second season with a 5.71 ERA and 45 strikeouts. After his sophomore season, Tad Skelley was named Vassar’s Head Baseball Coach and the coaching carousel came to a stop. Throughout those two tumultuous seasons of turnover and uncertainty, Lee noted the glue that held the team together was the bond that he and his teammates continue to share. “The thing that stayed consistent the whole time was family,” he recalled. “I think off the field and on the field, the baseball team has really stayed super close. And it’s the closest team that I’ve ever been on.”
As things were starting to turn around for Lee and the Brewers, Lee suffered a season ending injury in the fall of his junior year. Lee tore his ulnar collateral ligament, one of the most common injuries among pitchers, and underwent Tommy John surgery and months of rehabilitation. Initially devastated, Lee did not let his injury turn him away from his teammates. Instead, Lee recalled, “I think my mindset switched pretty quickly, to ‘how can I still have an impact on the team this year?’” Without Lee on the mound, Vassar struggled in 2025, ending the season with a record of 14-19.
Now in his senior season, Lee is fully recovered and playing the best ball of his career. Through seven outings so far, Lee has 2.97 ERA and 42 strikeouts. Against Bard on April 4, Lee pitched nine innings, allowing two runs on six hits, and tying his career high with nine strikeouts.
As a captain, Lee’s impact extends beyond the baseball diamond, ensuring that the culture of the team is inclusive and growth-oriented. With a roster full of young talent, Lee has taken on a mentorship role, showing his teammates that there is more to Vassar than just baseball. ”My high school was really athletics focused,” he said. “So when I got to Vassar, it was a completely different switch for me. It was almost nice to have baseball and take it really seriously but being able to explore other things—like, music was a big thing for me. I think it kind of changed even my identity a little bit as a person. It went from being almost entirely baseball to, like, I’m a very diverse person that I have other interests than I was able to explore here.” While the team is still chasing the level of success he envisioned as a freshman, Lee remains optimistic about the direction of the program. “We have a lot of young guys this year that have a chance to be really special,” he said.
When reflecting on his time at Vassar, Lee points to both the big moments and the small ones. The walk-off grand slam during his first year stands out as one of the highlights, but so do the bus rides and the banter in the dugout. Years from now, Lee knows that the friendships and bonds forged between teammates over four years of hard work will stay with him. “The baseball memories will definitely be there,” he said, “but, like, the stupid things, like playing Mario Kart in the dorms and stuff like that. I feel like that’s the stuff that I’ll miss the most 10 years down the road—just, like, having 30 of my best friends within walking distance all the time.”
As Lee takes off the baseball hat and dons the graduation cap this May, he leaves behind a legacy of resilience. His career may not have followed a straight path, but through adversity and growth, Lee helped define what it means to be a Vassar baseball player. There is no doubt that Addie Lee leaves the Vassar baseball program better than he found it.
Sierra McDermed ’26 came to Vassar College, among other reasons, to experience the changing seasons. She had no reason to expect that, during her time here, she would play under three different head coaches and win a pair of Liberty League championships. McDermed is from San Antonio, Texas, and is a guard on the women’s basketball team. During her time in Poughkeepsie, she earned a Liberty League Player of the Week and three Liberty League Performer of the Weeks; has been a finalist for Vassar Athletics Iron Brewer Award three times, winning in 2024; and has been named First Team All-Liberty League twice and Third Team All-Region III. But the senior guard’s presence on campus transcends sports. When she is not in the gym getting shots up, she is practicing for her upcoming jazz concert in Skinner Hall or preparing for engineering graduate school after Vassar. McDermed has a double major in applied math and physics with a correlate in music.
The recruitment process for basketball coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic was opaque, with many recruits deferring their commitments and recruitment classes already full. The Northeast was a clear target for McDermed, as she told The Miscellany News, “Coming from South Texas, we walked from the gym to the Deece, which is past the lakes, past the little lakes, past the bridge. It was very much fall time, so I kind of fell in love a lot with just the campus. And so when I left,I could see myself here. I could see myself not just as an athlete, but beyond as a student, walking to class each day and seeing certain students.”
As a serious competitor, McDermed was excited for the opportunity to push herself at a higher level. The women’s basketball program had come off a 17-8 season in which the team went 16-2 in Liberty League play. “The program at the time had a new coach that had a lot of success the year before,” McDermed continued, “and I knew of a few of the other players in my class, but not all of them. So I was excited for what was to come.” Entering her rookie season, expectations were high, but there was no way of predicting the success that was to come: “If you had asked me four years ago, if we were gonna go to the tournament two years back to back, I would have said, ‘No, probably not.’” McDermed arrived at Vassar with a nine-player class. The group was eager to build on the momentum of the team’s previous seasons.
Her rookie season was strong, finishing with a record of 18-9 after getting knocked out in the second round of the Liberty League playoffs. After the season, Head Coach Anthony Mason departed the program and Meredith Mesaris was hired shortly after to take over for Mason. Mesaris had spent time at Williams College, Dartmouth College and Haverford College before taking the head coach position at Vassar. In her first season with the Brewers, Mesaris led the team to a 25-3 record, including a 17-1 conference record and their first Liberty League championship since 2014. Under Mesaris, the squad repeated their Liberty League glory in 2025, going 15-3 in league and defeating Ithaca College to take the conference title once again. Mesaris’s success did not go unnoticed, and she was hired by Tufts University to lead their women’s basketball team in the summer of 2025. Head Coach Carly Assimon was hired in September 2025.
McDermed likened the experience of three different head coaches and departing players to any other distraction an athlete might face. Now, just four of the original nine players from the Class of 2026 remain on the women’s basketball team. But McDermed remains unswayed. When asked about how she stayed so consistent over four years of immense change around her, the answer was straightforward: “I think you could kind of compare that to a game; in a game, you’re gonna have a lot of noise going on around you. You have fans yelling for you and yelling against you. We got at Skidmore the whole thoroughbred stable is literally right behind the free throw line waving and cheering.”
This year, McDermed closed her college career starting 26 of 26 games for the Brewers while playing over 33 minutes per game for the third consecutive season. Looking back on her college career, McDermed will certainly remember cutting down the net at home after playing all 40 minutes in the 2024 Liberty League championship game and then doing it again the next year. But it will also be the little things: the quiet and snowy moments over winter break when no one but the basketball teams occupy the campus and the solitary moments in the AFC gym when the only noises are her own squeaking shoes and the ‘swoosh’ing of her shots.
There were a lot of unexpected highs and lows for Sierra McDermed, but she definitely got one thing in her time in Poughkeepsie: she definitely experienced the seasons.
While Jacob Sellitti, Lindsey Nihei, Addie Lee and Sierra McDermed all play different sports, come from different parts of the country and have different plans after graduation, they all have one thing in common: they were a Vassar Brewer for the last four years. Over that time, they made unique memories from long and loathsome bus rides to conference championship victories. The four student-athletes also highlight the beauty of Division III athletics: the ability to excel on and off the track, field and court. The four Brewers work tirelessly at their sports, but when they are not refining their technique or improving their conditioning, they are playing guitar or saxophone, TA-ing a computer science course, working hard in a biochemistry lab and much, much more. These stories show that Vassar Athletics are much more than box scores—they are real people with rich college experiences.