Stevens Admissions: Ellyn's Blog

Happy Mother's Day & An E8 Championship

Yesterday was Mother's Day and it was a wonderful day all around!

In the early afternoon before my mom came, my sister and I went to the Women's Lacrosse Empire 8 Championship and cheered them on as they won!  They earned an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row!  Congratulations to the entire team (and to all of the mothers of the girls on the team) - pretty good present if you ask me! :)

On top of that, my mom came up to Hoboken to spend the day.  Below is me and Lauren still decked out with our women's lacrosse jerseys (lent to us from our friends on the team, #6 Christine Smith and #9 Claire Eudy) taking a picture with our beautiful mother!

We spent the day just hanging out with our mom, gave her a present (a WebCam so she can Skype with us) and went out to dinner to celebrate at her favorite restaurant in Hoboken, Malibu Diner.

Note: The men's tennis team also won the conference yesterday, so they're going to the NCAA tournament too.  ALSO, the men's lacrosse team earned an at-large bid into NCAAs!  We have three teams repping Stevens in NCAA action this spring!

A Busy Few Days... Succeeding in Business Dinner, MATLAB Seminar, & Women's Basketball Game

Hello readers.  As the title of the blog alludes, it's been a busy few days... normally seniors coast during their last semester, but I instead took my "lighter" courseload to pursue more active roles in the organizations I'm involved in... the specifics (events I'm planning) will be talked about in later posts and I don't want to spoil it!  But stayed tuned to hear about it!

 

In other news, I have attended three cool events the past few days...

  The first event was a Succeeding in Business Dinner hosted by Women's Programming
& the Office of Career Development.  A successful Vice-President from Morgan Stanley came to campus for a session to give her do's and don't related to business.  Her "nuggets of wisdom" as she liked to call it gave all of the women in attendance a better view on the "soft" skills that women need to be successful in business.  I found the event to be extremely informative and the speaker really kept all of our attentions.  She was so personable and so honest!  It was a real treat to get to hear her speak (and eat some food from Vito's for dinner!)

Friday morning I went to a MATLAB Seminar.  MATLAB is a computing software sold by Mathworks.  It is one of the programs that comes pre-loaded on our laptops that we get as freshmen.  I've used it in a number of my undergraduate and graduate classes and have found it to be an extremely useful tool.  The only challenge I have dealt with it is the fact that I had no experience with it before college.  Learning the syntax and all of the powerful and useful features is a task in itself!  At this seminar, the instructor gave us some examples of cool problems that can be solved using the software.  I'm extremely happy I woke up on a Friday morning in order to go to it, because I know that it will be a program that I will use for years to come!

  Another event I went to was on Friday afternoon.  The women's basketball team had won their conference  and advanced to the NCAA tournament!  I am already a big advocate of school sports and like to go to as many games as I can, but I  really made sure I went to this game because some of the girls on the team are in my sorority.  I know that  they supported me and my team during our season, so I wanted to do the same for them.  Also, being in their place as a student-athlete, it meant the world to me to have my friends come to my games and support me.
The game was at William Paterson, so Stevens sent a bus to take students to the game.  A lot of students came out to support the team and really rep up Stevens at the game... we had quite a cheering section!  Although our team didn't come out victorious in the game, it was a real pleasure to watch our women play in the NCAAs and  see the team (and in particular, the seniors) give everything they had.

Stevens Field Hockey Keeping Up The High Expectations

One of the wonderful things about being a Division III student-athlete is that the institutions focus not only on the athletic performances of its student-athletes but also on the academic success of these individuals as well.  The culture of Stevens as a whole, and particularly of the field hockey team, was always that school was most important with field hockey being a priority right below it.  Our athletics staff does a really great job understanding the rigor of our courseload and understanding that we are going to enter the professional work force; many of us will not pursue our sport after college.  Although our athletics is extremely competitive and top-notch, we have a great balance.

Yesterday marked the seventh straight year that the field hockey teamed earned the NFHCA Academic Team Award for having a team GPA above the minimum 3.0 requirement.  Furthermore, not only has our team gotten this award since its inception seven years ago, but the team got a 3.34 GPA for the fall (3.21 cumulative)!  Particularly because we are in season during the fall, I am so proud and impressed that my teammates and I were able to accomplish this feat (and the same applies for all of the other sports on campus as well).  We were able to perform well academically and athletically, reaching the "Sweet 16" round of the NCAA Tournament.

Field Hockey Receives Academic Team Award from NFHCA is a link to the StevensDucks website highlighting the achievement of the team.  It also mentions that the All-Academic team (individual awards) will be announced next week.  I'll keep you updated!

GO DUCKS!

Last Field Hockey Banquet

On Sunday, I attended my last field hockey banquet ever!  It is Stevens field hockey tradition to hold a banquet after season to celebrate the accomplishments of the team.  Not every team in college (both at Stevens and at other schools) has a banquet, and I think this special event is indicative of how our team and program is.

This banquet was more than just a regular farewell to the seniors and celebration of the team's accomplishments this year... it ends an era in the field hockey program.  Our coach and founding coach of the program, Jess Roach (Reed), celebrated her last year with the Stevens field hockey team.  In addition to the careers of the seniors, the banquet also recapped Coach's 7 years with the program (since the program's founding).  It included videos, photos, and we were even fortunate enough to have some alumni and their families come for this momentous occasion.  Since the program was founded in 2004, we have produced All-Americans, Academic All-Americans, won 3 conference championships, advanced to the NCAA tournament 3 times (2 times going to the Sweet 16), among a number of other accolades... which is absolutely remarkable to do in such a short amount of time!

Looking back, I am so fortunate to be part of such a special family that is the Stevens Field Hockey Team.  When I gave a speech at the banquet, I said that being a part of this team helped me not only grow as a player but also as a person, and I really meant it.

Anyways, enough of the mushy stuff, I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

With the New Year comes New Years Resoutions!

FIRST BLOG OF 2011!  Marking my last semester as a student at Stevens!  Can't believe it!

Anyways, with the New Year, comes New Years resolutions...
I have a few resolutions but my biggest one is fitness related.  Being that my days of collegiate athletics are over, I decided in December that I needed something to train for.  Since 8th grade, going to the gym and working out was always going towards SOMETHING... whether it be field hockey or my days doing track.  Now that my incentive to work out is purely for my own benefit AND I still have a drive for some sort of competition, I decided to....

RUN A HALF MARATHON (my first one!)
For those who don't know, a half marathon is 13.1 miles, so this is a pretty lofty goal!

I was never really interested in distance running before now.  Truthbetold, the running was my least favorite part of preseason.  Although I knew it was important to be in shape, I would have much rather just played field hockey instead because I was always bored when I would run. 
Now, I have a completely different mindset and am thoroughly enjoying running, especially because I have a running buddy for my runs.  Plus, going on a run in this area where there is always a view of NYC is a pretty sweet deal.

So the countdown begins... the half is scheduled for April 17th at Rutgers University in New Brunswick... it's called the Unite Half Marathon.  Not only will I be running in the race, but my sister and a few friends will also be running it, so I am excited to continue training and hopefully reach my time goal!

 

 

I have no voice... Successful weekend in Pittsburgh

On Friday afternoon we departed for our long away trip to Pittsburgh to play Washington and Jefferson for Saturday morning.  The trip was really long particularly because there was loads of anticipation.  Not only was this a huge conference game for us, but we also had a full weekend consisting of a visit to a scarehouse and dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse.

Our long trip began with watching tons of fun movies on the bus ride including Charlie’s Angels, Zoolander, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.   I enjoy napping on the bus so I admit that I didn’t watch all of them!

When we finally arrived in Pittsburgh we went right to dinner.  It was delicious!  I got to sit at a table with my sister, Karen, and Mel.  It was nice to sit down and have dinner with the seniors on the team (it doesn’t normally happen).  We stuffed our faces but not too much because we wanted to be ready for the scarehouse.

The scarehouse we went to is one of the best in the country.  We went there as a team the last time we were in Pittsburgh and it was absolutely terrifying!  The link to the scarehouse is at http://www.scarehouse.com/ .  I knew what was to come, but I will admit that I still screamed A LOT.

Saturday morning comes around and we are set to play W&J at 10am.  The team was extremely pumped to play this game, because we’ve played W&J in the conference championship for the past two years AND they were undefeated in conference this year.  The game proved to meet our expectations.  It was an extremely competitive game.  They scored first on us.  Even though I hate getting scored on, I will admit that their goal was good.  We answered right back in the first half with Mary Nikish scoring on a corner.  The second half was played in both sides of the field.  The excitement came at the end of the game.  W&J got a corner against us with no time left in regulation.  They took a shot that was deflected high and one of their players raised her stick and batted the ball into the goal.  W&J stormed the field and began cheering.  The official originally called it a goal to end the game but I immediately went up to her after she made the call to argue against it saying that it wasn’t legal.  Luckily, the other official agreed with me and the goal was taken back… meaning we were now about to start overtime!  W&J got corners against us but the defense played great so we were able to deny them the golden goal that would’ve ended the game.  A few minutes later in the overtime, Caitlin “Cali” Chamberlain got a breakaway against the other team but was tripped from behind in the circle.  Therefore, the official awarded us a penalty stroke.  Mallory stepped up to take the stroke and scored!  It was a beautiful stroke and ended the game!  We were so excited, because it was a great game that could’ve gone either way but we were able to get it done.

I could not be more proud of our performance… I’m not even mad that I lost my voice this weekend! :)

 

Field Hockey + I'm on Youtube!

I was interviewed today along with two of my teammates (Mal aka Meow & Caitlin aka Cali) to talk a little bit about how our field hockey season is progressing.

If you've been following athletics, you'll see that we had a rough start to our season. The team is so talented but so young, so it took us a long time to adjust and hit our groove. Luckily, we're hitting that point and really gelling as a team. We've got a few big weeks coming up, and I am confident that all of the hard work and preparation we've put in will help us succeed, and perhaps more importantly, HAVE FUN while doing it! :)

Anyways, below is the video!

My first poster!

For every game on campus, athletics puts signs around campus to inform everyone of the upcoming game and encourages people to come.

With every poster, they put a picture of a student-athlete for that team.

I have never had a poster with my picture on it, but FINALLY I got my first poster!
...but late than never :)

Big Weekend in Sports & Work Study

This past weekend was a huge weekend in athletics ... and I work-studied for most of it!
(Work Study is a program where individuals get money from the government that is earned by working at your college.)
I work-study in the athletics department.

FRIDAY: The men's and women's basketball teams played a doubleheader against Ithaca.
I work-studied by selling raffle tickets to raise money for athletics.  The raffle I was selling tickets for is towards a wine tasting dinner at a delicious restaurant in Hoboken called Amanda's.

SATURDAY: The wrestling team had their conference championship at home.
I work-studied by helping out the organizers with whatever they needed from running errands to monitoring the gates to make sure spectators didn't cross into the athletes' preparation space.

SUNDAY: The men's and women's basketball teams played a doubleheader against RIT.
I volunteered my time for National Women in Sports Day to run a field hockey clinic.  It is great to teach people about something that I really enjoy!

I like work-studying in athletics because it lets me support the teams and earn some money!

There were some great performances this weekend! Congratulations to all the sports who competed this weekend! I know wrestling, fencing, lacrosse, tennis, swimming, and baseball all competed!

Taking a break from studying...

Hello readers.  I am using writing this blog to take a break from studying.  Since Friday, I have practically locked myself in the library to focus to work on projects and study for finals.

First, let me show you what I saw as I was walking back from classes last week! :)
The sign below is hung on Walker Gym, so it is ideal to view as people are walking back from classes! Every time I walk by, it makes me proud and happy all over again to have won the conference again.
Last year a sign similar to this one was on the Howe building and this year it has changed locations.
Signs congratulating the men's soccer team and women's volleyball team are hung outside Schaefer Gym.

 

And here, just for fun is a picture of the plaque we got.

Next, members from my sorority's fall new member class got initiated recently.  I was lucky enough to get a "Little". She just so happens to be like half a foot taller than me... but I am still her Big Sister in the sorority lol.
After initiation, the new members are finally allowed to wear the sorority's Greek letters. Big sisters usually buy a t-shirt or other apparel / bags with the letters on it. Me (being adventurous) decided I would take a try at making the letters from scratch. Let me tell you, it is VERY hard and time consuming.  It is an experience I am happy to say that I have done, but I'm not sure when is the next time I am going to be making letters!  It took a long time to try and learn and get the gist of making it, but, in the end, I think it came out really well!
I picked out the patterns, t-shirts, and sewed everything myself (with help from some of my sorority sisters of course!... and a sewing machine)

As you'll notice, the pattern in the back is brown with an assortment of different colored dots.
The front pattern is pink with monkeys and bananas.

 
I made two t-shirts with the same pattern (just different colored shirts).  I figured it'd be something cute that only my Little Sister and I have.

OK, I'm getting back to studying. I'll blog again soon... when I'm hopefully less stressed!