Athletics at Sewanee

Alright, hi everyone. Welcome in. We're going to give a couple of minutes just to let everyone who was registered start to trickle in, but I just put a note in the chat so that can also be a moment to look for the chat box on your screen, but as we wait for other people to join in, definitely feel free to introduce yourself, tell us where you're from. If you'd like. Also, given that this is an athletics session, you can feel free to.

Time tell us what sport you're potentially. I'm going to be playing while you're here at Swanee. But yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

Daniel Gale, welcome in.

Alright, so it looks like our the number coming in is starting to flatten out now so we can go ahead and get started. I can go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Shiro Burnett and I am one of the admission counselors here in the office at Swanee, but we're happy to have you guys all here. We have three of our current students here to talk about athletics and some of their experiences as a student athlete here on campus, but also.

Yeah.

Going into both of those aspects, so as a student, how did they manage their time, but also as an athlete potentially going into their own recruitment process? The sports they play and so forth. Give it a little bit of background myself. I miss getting along. I'm coming up on my second year here in the office of admission, but I did work in the office all four years as this morning's unit, so it's great to be back here in that capacity. But with that, I'll go ahead and let's each of.

Our.

Our students introduce themselves and maybe just we can go in the order that's on the slide just to kind of keep things in check. But yeah, if you can introduce yourselves, maybe say where you're from your class here. Your major slash minors and the current sport you play.

Yeah, so my name is Emma Fain. I am a senior here on campus. I was captain of the varsity cheer team last semester and I am a Bachelor of Science Psychology major with a double minor in business and philosophy.

Hey everyone, my name is William Katie. I am a sophomore here at Swanee. I am a politics and or politics major in a Spanish minor and I am on the football team as a defensive lineman.

Hi my name is Catherine. I am a sophomore here from Cincinnati, OH, uh, my run cross country and track.

And I have a math major in an economics minor.

Awesome, thank you guys. So one quick note as all of you as attendees as you're putting in questions in the chat we use what's called a moderated chat, so don't worry if you don't see your question immediately, I'll be approving those like as we go throughout this session, but definitely as we go through.

If you if you hear something that you want to ask a question on, definitely feel free to put it in there multiple times as we're going throughout this session, we're gonna be taking moments to check that chat, see what questions are there, but will also make sure that at the very end we're dedicating a significant portion of time to answering your questions. And I do see that we have a good amount of people on here, and so we definitely want to make sure that you all get the information that you need. But so with that we can go ahead and get started, and I'm going to start kind of like from a top down perspective.

I know many of you are deposited students, but also I see that others are in different stages of the application process, so just kind of making sure that everyone has the same info.

As we're kind of talking about things and referencing things here on campus, so just some baseline information about swaney. You know, as many of you do know, but still just kind of like I said, covering our basis. We're small liberal arts college. We're located in Southern Middle Tennessee, so you can kind of see on the map just exactly where we are.

I'm kind of right in between those two metropolitan areas so Chattanooga is right about 45 to 45 minutes to an hour away from us. And then we're about an hour and 20 minutes or so South from downtown Nashville, capital of Tennessee. We're on 13,000 acres and you can really see that in this aerial shot of Swanee, so there's a lot of land around us, which is a big pool for us over here in admissions and then some more data underneath that. So just under 1700 students.

But the neat thing is that most of those students you know they're not coming from the state of Tennessee, which is pretty unique as a small liberal arts College in the South. We're really recruiting mostly outside of Tennessee. I'm also internationally, as you can see, those dirty countries represented, but yeah. And so given some background on to just our athletic structure. We do have 24 varsity sports where D3 institution and you can see.

Our our conference that we're in here and then also the logos of each of those schools. And so it's eight different schools and also we as Swanee where the Swanee Tigers so you can see that in the bottom bottom right hand side and then this next slide just shows all of those different sports that we have here. And so a lot to choose from. And again one thing I'll go back to this previous slide. Another thing to keep in mind is that a third of our students, our student athletes.

So there is a pretty significant portion. I myself, I wasn't a student athlete here on campus.

But I definitely knew a lot of student athletes. You know, being that is a third of our student population, you're definitely not going to be alone in that transition process. As a student athlete, there's gonna be a lot of people that are kind of figuring out that balance and working through the different workout schedules and things like that. And so there's a lot of community and comfortability, I think to be found there. But of course, our students can speak more to that, and so with that, I guess we'll go ahead and get started. We were looking through.

There are some questions that many people submitted beforehand, just in the registration, but like I said throughout this entire event, please feel free to put as many questions as you have into that chat, and then we'll address those as we go along. But just to start out thinking about that.

That student athlete balance so that I'm in the in the classroom, but also the time that you're spending and workouts, practices and things like that. Can each of you kind of talk a little bit about the calendar year of your of your particular sport and what that looks like when you're both.

In season, but then also in the offseason and what that looks like in terms of how much time you need to dedicate to your particular sport.

And I guess we can start from now going that same order that we did for the introductions, and that seems the title slide.

Yeah, so I'll start as a cheerleader. It's primarily a fall sport 'cause we cheer for our football team which will is on which is super exciting. So we have practice three days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and then games on Saturday. So it's a pretty good balance. We meet usually 2 1/2 three hours on those Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays and so nothing too crazy, but certainly a commitment. Getting your workout in, you know, perfecting everything with the team.

For game day on Saturday, off season is the spring in less we decide to choose basket or to cheer for basketball. UM, it really just depends on if we have enough girls who are interested or guys we have a Coed team. It depends on the year whether or not we have guys try out, but most of the time it's girls and it's usually just whether or not we have enough people who are interested in cheering for basketball. And we usually do men and women's basketball. And for basketball we actually only need two days a week so it's less of a commitment in the spring than it is in the fall.

Alright, I'll go next. So like Emma said, football is primarily heavily focused in the fall. That is our main season. Last year we did have a little bit of COVID season in the spring, but we're back to normal for now. With that and for me that usually looks like a full week of football. Except for Sundays we do workout.

Twice a week during season and we are practicing every day from Monday through Friday. That looks a little different though. Some days were not in pads. Some days we're more in a classroom just breaking down different film and then of course on Saturdays. Those are game days.

And they really try to treat us well. We're always on the go every few weeks for away games we might leave on Friday night we might leave Thursday night. It just depends on how far we're going. And then for the offseason.

They try to keep us in shape as best we can. That's for us. That is our time where we really try to get in the best shape possible for the next season. Right now we just started spring football but before spring football we were working out Monday, Tuesday we were off on Wednesdays and then Thursday and Friday.

And right now we're only practicing on Monday, Tuesday, and then Thursday, and we have two workouts in between.

Ohm for cross country and track.

When you practice every day, both seasons, although if you were to just do cross country, that would just be the fall in track. Would just be the spring but we practice every day, usually in the afternoon for like 2 hours. There's usually like 1 morning practice a week and sometimes that day we don't have afternoon practice.

And then we usually race like every other weekend, and sometimes it's on campus and sometimes it's off. But another thing I'll add is that our coaches really want us to feel like it's sustainable for us, especially for those that are running both sports 'cause a lot of people do.

And so if you're feeling really burnt out, they might allow you to like not run a race or cross train instead of run during a practice or something like that. So they're really open to feedback and want to make sure everyone is feeling like practice and the season is sustainable for them.

Awesome, thank you Paul. And then I did see 11. Attendee noted that they couldn't see one of the students. Just as a note. One thing that helps I've noticed in these sessions if you can't see everyone video, try just zooming out. If you're zoomed in too much, it'll start to delete like different videos out of frame, but if any other attendees can't hear any one of us that's speaking on, please feel free to let us know in the chat.

And I can troubleshoot further on that, but for now, just like kind of as a next question. Again, just thinking about like this, this balance that we're talking about can each of you just kind of.

Explain some of your experiences, like managing like your actual class work, maybe potentially some interactions that you've had with professors in regards to different schedulings with games and things like that, how understanding they may be if you ever have to reschedule anything with that exam, homework assignments, anything like that at all, and whoever just has like.

A good note on that, you can just go ahead. We don't have to think about our quarter.

I can speak to that a little bit. As you mentioned earlier, about 1/3 of our students are student athletes, so professors know UM and are used to people sometimes having conflicts with class. So a lot of times it's important to just communicate that ahead of time. So say like as William said, a football team might need to leave Thursday night for a game.

And you maybe have class Friday, so earlier in that week or the week prior it would be important to just communicate with your professors and almost all of the time they will be like no problem. Thanks for letting me know. You know, this is what we're doing that day. And here's how you can catch up. So on that end, it's usually pretty taken care of UM. And then on the coaches and two I know sometimes, like if I was in a chemistry lab it ran late a couple times last semester and

I was late to practice and my coaches were understanding of that and had the mentality that academics do come first. I mean, that's why you go to college, so they were respectful of that too, so.

I think just communication on both ends is really important, but it's usually not an issue.

Yeah, I would agree with Catherine in that Speaking of athletics, I've had two concussions and my time at Swanee and professors have been super accommodating to understand I'm sorts of things like that because it's your team actually doesn't travel a lot, so I don't have a lot of experience with asking to be away from class, but I have from my connections, so that's just athletic related and that just goes to how accommodating professors can be very, you know, open to rearranging schedules and exams and meeting with you outside of class.

I know all of my teachers know my name on a first name basis and will be like no problem Emma. You know I have class until 5:00 o'clock on Thursday, but if you can come in after that my sophomore year, I have like nearly an entire month of one of my psychology classes taught to me like 1 on one from one of my professors just because I had gotten so behind for my concussion and my major. So it was really important to me. So I've just had phenomenal experiences with professors being accommodated to athletic related.

Circumstances.

I can also speak to that. Just this last fall I did get injured playing football and had to be off campus for surgery for two weeks and all of my professors were really supportive about it. I personally it does take a lot to get back to where you need to be to where you're on time with all your assignments, but they definitely all gave good extensions on. There was never really one time where I was like, you know, just mad at a professor 'cause I wasn't getting.

What I thought I deserved. Every single professor worked with me every day on it and access ability was really good from the professors. And if you're in a position like me where I couldn't even actually walk at the time, the office of Accessibility is really good about that, and especially come fall with football players. It's kind of part of the job. You kind of expect to get a little dinged up every once in a while. They do try to work really quickly with you.

And administration was really good for my situation.

Definitely thank you all. Yeah, I as a quick note I I'm looking again at the just like the participants that we have here and I've spoken with many of you who are joining us tonight and having conversations like in the recruitment process where we talk about the community here at Swanee this flexibility. Each of these students are speaking to like with professors as another aspect of that having that ability to just approach Professor very casually and say, hey, I have this going on or next week.

This is what's happening and their level of accessibility to work with you like one on one is definitely one of those great benefits of a place like swine. So definitely keep that in mind and I'm glad that each of you with students right will be able to communicate that as well.

In that same vein, can can you tell me you or or some of you talk more on that level of accessibility in terms of like resources that are on campus that helps out students to things like if any of you have utilized the writing center, how professors are accessible and how they operate within their office hours to get extra help, any other forms of departmental like tutoring? I know different departments have tutoring.

William, I believe you mentioned like being a Spanish minor and so things like the language lab. I know when I was a student were incredibly helpful, but any of those, just like academic resources that can help students with their coursework. If you guys have any experiences with those.

I have not used the language lab yet, but I have used a lot of different just swaney provided sources for accessibility for out of class resources. The big one for me has been professors. A lot of my politics professors if I'm ever working on a paper.

I'll have to do is really just schedule an appointment with them during office hours and they love to go over your papers with you and then just see where your ideas are and you might go into that meeting with no ideas, but they're going to try and help you find a median ground to get something there. And I know one thing that a lot of my friends like to use is the writing center.

It's not backed up a ton. People always talk to me on tours through admissions and wonder if it's like always full. From what I hear, it's never really full like we have a lot of students that use it, but there's so many people that are using it daily that we have so many people allotted to help others out with it. And it's a really good experience for getting your papers good.

Yeah, on top of that, on top of the writing center I actually am a tutor for the speaking and listening center, so the writing center is great for papers and then the speaking and listening center is great for if you have any presentations or discussion based courses or just need somebody to look over an outline for something that you vocally have to speak.

Actually tutored William, which is kind of funny, so just small world small campus. You interact with a lot of fellow athletes and fellow students in ways that you never expected, but there are so many opportunities to get assistance. I know there's a bunch of extra math help if you need it. I have a friend in like a Calc 3 class right now as a sophomore and it is not easy for her and so she's getting tutoring for her cat class. I know professors generally have students too, that they'll lot for their Class 2 for like extra help. I was a TA for a site class last semester.

And so I was kind of the go to person. If students had questions on their homework or anything like that, so I know that's a resource that lots of professors provide as well.

Yeah, and another note on that. Just like in terms of interacting with professors, UM, ever since I came to Swanee, I felt like it is set up for you to succeed. UM, I almost think it would be hard to not succeed. UM, professors want to help you if you are not available during their office hours and you shoot them an email 9 times out of 10 they will make time to be like hey OK yeah, come by at three today or I can see you tomorrow morning.

There are so many other resources outside of professors too, but.

As long as you are willing to put in the effort of seeking those resources and applying yourself like swaney is set up for you to succeed.

That way, and so I'll just give a quick note since I mentioned it at the beginning, so the language live here. When I was just wanting student, that was something that I utilized, but that's a resource on campus. It's in Galar Hall, and so every language that Swanee teaches there's a tutor in there for that language, and they have different hours posted that you can go and see the Spanish tutor or see the French tutor, but also as a lab. A lot of your language classes will take place.

There because that room that classroom slash center has a lot of resources like like movies and things like that, but also as a swatting student you have access like a free account for like Rosetta Stone, Mango languages, which is really cool and very useful. I use it today as like I'm not a student, but I use it. But yeah, so definitely a lot more opportunities outside of the classroom to still get.

Both still get those resources.

And then another thing I'm looking back at the register questions and again.

Please feel free to questions in the chat everyone that you have things that we may be mentioning, but I'm looking back at the questions on registration and going back to like your schedule. Just like breaking down like your classes with and also like practices and things like that. Can you describe just like an average day? I know every single sport is different. Sometimes people may have morning workouts. Some people have more evening workouts, but when you have.

You know your classes in the same day as those workouts. Can everyone just kind of give like a walkthrough of what that typically looks like for you?

Yeah, I can start feel so weird as a senior, so I'm actually taking three courses this semester, so I'll give you a Monday from last semester for me. I had a philosophy, a philosophy class in the morning, a site class mid afternoon, which is pretty standard to have two classes a day. First money which isn't too much. Pretty average though. And then I would have cheer practice from 5:30 to 8:00 on Mondays, which was flexible because it used to start at 5:00 and then so many people had labs until 5.

5:15 so we actually push practice back to accommodate for those labs for students. And then I was president of my sorority, so I had sorority meetings. Then from 8:15 to 9:15 at night, which we also push back our sorority meeting, because we had so many cheerleaders a part of our sorority who had practiced till 8. So I think that just really goes to show how accommodating swannies to working with the majority of students schedules. Clearly, it's not always gonna work out for everybody. I've had times where I've had to be like plaque practice because I have a class that runs late and my coach was totally OK with it.

It's definitely semester by semester basis, at least for cheerleading. Based on like the majority of when people have classes to what time? And we would adapt practice according to that.

A typical day for me when I'm in season for either cross country or track would be getting up. I prefer to take morning classes so I'd maybe go to breakfast, go to class.

Either have two or three classes in the morning.

And then sometimes a lab in the afternoons.

And then we practice around 4:30 usually and it'll usually go till about 6:30. Sometimes it's early, sometimes it's late and then every single time our team goes to dinner together afterwards.

And then I usually go back to my room, shower, change head to the library for a few hours to study.

And then go to bed and do it all over again.

So I'll give a typical Wednesday for football players. That's usually our brunt of the week during season at least. So for me that will look like a workout. I'm usually like Catherine, a morning person, so most of my classes are in the morning, but with that comes our workouts. So during season those can be as early as 6:37 o'clock. It just depends on how everybody schedules are.

Panning out for that season. They try to do three different lift times, but it just depends on how everybody is flying with that, but I'll usually go from my left, come back to my dorm and shower and then go to breakfast and go to my classes. It's usually two a day I've not had one semester yet where I've had to have three classes in the day.

Knock on wood for that, but usually for us our pre practice meetings start around 4:15. I also work a work study so I I try and fit that time in between where I can usually work about 2 hours and for me it's just like a little break in my day where I don't have to worry about homework or school but I just get to focus on just hanging out with the people at or at my job.

But then we go straight from our meetings at about 5:00 o'clock to practice till I wanna say about 7:37, fifteen ish, and we usually go straight over to mcclurg like Catherine said, like the whole team usually sits together and then I'm a library junkie too. So I always had over there and I might be there for three hours. It all just depends on how much work on actually doing most of the time. I feel like I do too much talking in there compared to actually working.

And then repeat.

Gotcha, thank you so kind of transition. You know a little bit away from academics and kind of go into our next topic. So mainly kind of thinking about the social life here at Swanee campus life in general. And one common question that we have gotten with this type of session and then also just throughout my crew process is do student athletes all live in the same dorm? Is there a dorm for all the football players? Is there a dorm for all the basketball players?

I'll quickly answer that and say no, there's not, but using that as an opportunity for each of you to just kind of describe your your housing experience here is funny. Because even though.

Of course it may not be structured. You know that all football players are our cheerleaders. Live in the same place, sometimes like as friend groups people may do that. But yeah, there's a different process for everyone. But yeah, if you can, each just kind of describe housing at Swanee, your experience with it. How you decided where to live.

I can start up.

So I guess first year as a freshman you actually do not get to choose your roommate or your dorm, UM, which I found to be very nice because it's just like 1 less thing you have to stress about when you're coming to campus and you fill out a survey answering all kinds of questions about your schedule and your sleeping habits and all of that kind of thing. So that way they pair you up. They really do. Make sure to consider like who would live well together, so for me.

My roommate, freshman year, and I did live really well together. She was not an athlete, but she respected my schedule and it never was an issue. And this year as a sophomore.

Sir, every every year after freshman year you do get to choose your roommates. So this year I am living with someone who's on the swim team, so we both are not on the same team, but we both have practice and respect. Our early morning practices and have learned how to live together.

And we both go to bed pretty early 'cause we are tired from practice and stuff. So we live well together for sure.

So for me, I will say that even though we don't all share the same dorm for football players, it kind of works out where there's usually a group of about 10 guys per dorm in my dorm. Right now, I'm stuck with a bunch of freshmen. I'm the only sophomore in here, but I love it. I get to run around with a bunch of the guys that are freshmen and Ayers Hall, which is one of our newest storms on campus. But if I go over to any of the

other dorms where my other friends are at.

They're always usually close together, so I don't think that goes for every team, but mostly with the football players we try to stick together in our room selection. I don't think that's too random, and it's not really just like we're close, close friends, 'cause.

There's some cases sure where four best friends will go in. I get a sweet together, but most of the time it's just kind of we gradually gravitate towards each other and.

Along with what Catherine said about first year experience, I didn't have the greatest first year experience with my first roommates. He was a golf player and we didn't get along the bus, but even that being said, residential life works really well with me.

We got that problem sorted out and I got to another roommate who surprisingly is a football player and with my better friends now. But going into your second year, you really get a lot more flexibility and usually you don't really run into those problems. You just gotta make sure you're making the right decision and who you want a room with.

Yeah, and then I'm kind of in a unique circumstance. I actually work for a residential life. I'm what's called a lead Proctor, which at most schools is called an RA or a resident assistant, and I've been doing this for three years now, so I actually have lived by myself all three years or my last three years after my freshman year because I've held this position, but it's been great to see all the athletes and non athletes come together in their communities. I was actually a Proctor where William is last two years and it is a freshman football heavy dorm.

So like we said, they don't usually pair you with a football player, but they do kind of group you together. Especially, you know sports that have to come back early and things like that just so you can walk to practice together and you can walk to the dining hall together before classes start. If you have to come back early in the fall or in the spring. But yeah, it's been a great experience just to watch communities build together in general. Lots of our non athletes will go support the athletes on that are in their residence hall which is really cool to see. Like I have a suite of baseball players that live next to me.

Here's as well and so a bunch of my friends and I'll go watch him play baseball. It's just interesting to learn the people around you and it's cool that we don't have athlete. Only dorms. That way we can learn from each other and just support each other in different ways and different things that we do across campus.

And just another like quick plug like in addition to all of these different residence halls that students can live in. We also have like language houses and theme houses across campus, so there really are a lot of different options. I lived in a language house when I was this morning student. There's like a Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian. There's all different types of theme palaces and they're completely like student run two and so, and they rotate in and out. And so if you as a student, you know when you come to campus.

I'll look into your sophomore years after your freshman year where you're living in a traditional residence hall. But if you have an idea for like a new theme palace and there's an open one that can be something that you can start up. But yeah, there's lots of different ways to kind of switch up your living arrangement from year to year so it never has to be exactly the same.

And so also kind of thinking about like your social life here. I know William you mentioned earlier, like having a work study position but also just thinking more about your responsibilities as an athlete, but also how you're able to situate time within you know, potentially like Creek organizations, different clubs, organizations that you're part of. Just apart from just developing community within your teammates.

But also other ways that you're engaging with this morning community. If you can kind of speak to those experiences.

So I can go first. So for me with my work study, I usually work about 8 hours a week.

They usually spread it out in between all five days of the week. Sometimes I can even work on on a weekend if I want to. It just depends on what my office has me doing. I work with the purchasing office, which is a segment of our business office and outside of that I also work with admissions and I am an Arcadian leader which is.

I work with Catherine as well and Emma to a lesser extent where we do all of our tours here on campus and as an Arcadian leader I do have two responsibilities where I have to go and check in for my tour guides and then lunch hosts and occasionally I'll give tours every once in awhile nowadays and for me it's really not that hard to balance time. Most of the organizations you work with will.

Send you out like surveys. I I know for admissions like they send us out a form that we fill out that lays out all of our free time and then for my work study. That's totally up to me. I decide my hours. Some of them are a little different. I got a little lucky with my flexibility in mind. I have friends that work in the Wellness Center and they might have their own. Like a lot of times, but they do fit in with their schedule. They just don't have.

Full flexibility into it, only certain ones get that privilege.

Oh, I can go next come. So yeah, like William said, one of the things I'm involved in on campus is the admissions office.

I for awhile was an Arcadian leader as well where I was helping make sure guys were showing up on time and things like that and I recently was selected for position for a Co director position. So I now help run. I don't know if any of you guys on this have been to any of our preview events.

But I help her on those and any other special events we have. So that is one thing that can sometimes conflict with a cross country race. If it's on a Saturday morning. So that's just something I have to communicate with my coaches ahead of time and be like hey this Saturday. You know the 26th or whatever if we have a race I can't be there and they're usually pretty understanding of that, but some other things I'm involved with.

I am involved with a peer health program, so we work with the Wellness Center and we help advocate and educate about mental and physical health around campus and actually they have a theme house that I will be living in next year, which I know Shiro mentioned earlier.

Uhm, and then I'm also involved in Greek life and I tutor some 8th grade students for math.

And a couple other things like that. So it is definitely possible to be very involved as an athlete.

Yeah, I've mentioned several things I'm involved in. I actually got into this because I'm a senior interviewer, not an Arcadian. So because I am so busy, I decided I couldn't be an Arcadian. I just didn't have the time to do tours, but as a senior you have the opportunity to interview potential incoming freshmen and beyond panels like this, which is what I ended up doing and I've loved it.

I'm a part of Greek life. I am actually what's called a Bonner leader scholar, which is like a community service organization not only on this campus. It's like a nationwide organization, but it's really cool that Swanee has the program and it actually overlaps with my work study. So I get paid while I am out doing community service. Just because Swanee likes to merge as much.

Time being spent as they can all say so that's been really helpful. I tutor in the speaking listening center. I was at EA for a psych class last semester. I do research in the Psychology department and a bunch of other things. What I will say as I'm rambling now.

My Google Calendar is my absolute best friend. I love Google Calendar. I'm a big organizer, color coder, all that. So when your schedule gets to be as hectic as mine and you are a part of 7-8 organizations at one time. Aside from classes, it's kinda easy to forget what you have next in your schedule for the day. So I love to have it on my laptop. On my phone I have all my friends obsessed with it. We schedule our like study times together, so that's really important. I do schedule in my study time that way like.

I'm not like, oh shoot, I have an exam tomorrow and have had no time to study. When I have this study blocks in my calendar. My friends are like let's go get pizza. I'm like I can't. I have a 2 hour study block that I've created for myself, but I'll send you an invite if you'd like to join. So I cannot emphasize Google Calendar enough. It is certainly my best friend.

Awesome, thank you all.

And then if anyone has noticed, there is a commonality of people working at the Admissions Office, so definitely kind of consider that as a part of your Your Swanee career. Another thing, just a quick note on something that in terms of with banners. So yes, that is a really great opportunity. And so all of you should have gotten an email pretty recently for that application. Those are two April 1st and so check your inbox is for those.

But if you have any questions, definitely feel free to to email our office. We can help walk you through that process. Any other logistics that you need to get that board. So that's a great opportunity to to do some community engagement and again get more contact with the surrounding area from Swanee. I think there's a 45 minute radius that they worked with, kind of like in all directions. But yeah, definitely keep that in your mind.

And so with that I I wanted again just open up the floor.

To any questions that you as you have definitely feel free to put those in the chats undergone through a good amount of the ones that were submitted.

And in the registration. But yeah, happy to take any questions that you guys have.

From that, as those are waiting to come in, I'll I'll look at the last one that we had.

With.

The last few years, you know, being the way that they were. How have things potentially changed? You know, with practices with games I I know William, you touched on this a little bit, but just like with COVID protocols.

To what extent are?

Are those affecting like your day-to-day right now, I guess.

It seems to be what the question is getting.

So just in a general note, the university does follow CDC guidelines and NCAD 3 guidelines as well for operating procedures for different sports. I I know for football in the fall it worked like if we were vaccinated we didn't have to wear a mask on a bus ride to a game we didn't have to wear them in the field of play during spring ball.

When we were working out, we did have to wear masks not during the field of play though, but attendance. I believe fans were required to wear mask at the time. Right now that's not a thing though. Just before spring break we just got back from spring break. On Monday they lifted our mask mandate over the university so none of our stuff at all now requires mass.

We were mass free outside, so that didn't really affect anything. I had to do outside for football. But inside while that mask mandate was going on, we did have to wear masks during practice. It definitely is a bit of a challenge if you've never done it before.

I had to start doing it during freshman year. In the summer. They tried to encourage us to workout with it and by this point I felt like I was pretty much adjusted to it, but it definitely was a little bit of a challenge, but I think it makes you a better athlete in the end if you have to go through it because it's almost like high altitude training and you know we're not really on a high mountain, but you know it's something.

And so I think one question did come in, and so this is from Solomon. He's they say how many hours per day slash week do you need to study in order to do well academically?

How much younger?

I can go sure I wasn't sure, and I personally would say that that varies per class per class level and per professor. So if you have a lab or a discussion or a seminar based class, you're probably just going to be spending more time doing either readings or prep work for discussions in that class, which is more different, which is more different, which is different than doing like active homework assignments. So as a senior I'm in higher level classes that tend to be labs or seminars.

So I do a lot of reading and preparation to have conversations. I don't really do a lot of like exam studying. It's more so discussion and then essay base, but I can definitely say that my freshman year I spent a decent number of hours in the library studying for like Gen CHEM exams and things like that. So I think it just depends on what you wanna do. If you're gonna be a chemistry major, you're always going to be studying for chemistry exams, so it just kind of depends on what classes you take and what professors you have in their expectations.

Yeah, and I would say coming in freshman year. You usually are taking more classes that are 100 level or maybe like general education requirements, so I think they do a good job of helping you transition from high school.

2 college courses. In that sense. Freshman year isn't usually like a shock, it's more just about learning how to manage your time because you have so much more free time. But you also do need to study and then as your classes do, get a little bit harder.

I mean for me as a math major.

I do better in math classes and then I do in like English classes for example. So yes, my classes are getting harder, but it's also in a subject area that I enjoy like a lot and is my major and so.

Uhm?

I'm, you know I want to do well in it and I make sure to go to office hours and make sure I understand and so.

Then that makes homework a little bit easier because I've talked to the professor about it or tried to understand from class. So as long as you're kind of keeping up with like.

Not just like doing the work, but understanding it. That also helps take off the load when it comes time for an exam you don't have to like cram a bunch of stuff 'cause you've been studying a little bit along the way, so that's something I've found that's helped. But yeah, I think you it kind of gradually increases and you start to take classes that you're more interested in, which helps too.

Alright, I'd like to add on to that, so I'm like Catherine. I hate math so I'll be the first person to tell you that is the one thing I hate about college the most. So for me freshman year I was in Calculus 2 and hardest class in my life.

I want to be a lawyer, so I don't really claim to want to learn how to do multivariable calculus, and for me it was really about good notetaking I. I think that's universal for any class. It really big for me as a politics major is being selective in my note taking and being very.

Uh, not just listening to what professors are saying or what the discussion saying, but like having my own little discussion in my head about what a different topic is, 'cause there's been times where I've been like theorizing, just different political theories, and then boom, I'd come up with a final paper project and you know, you never really think about that stuff in high school. At least I didn't, but I think like one of the big things in college is like really expanding your ability to take.

Notes and being proactive on going back to that class.

We had a tutor for that class.

I was in the mode where I was like. I have to go to this tutor or I'm not gonna do well in it, and because I went to the tutor.

My professors saw the initiative I was taking. There was another football player in that class who.

So you know we had this bond where we knew we were going through the same struggle and we tried to keep pushing through it. Going to tutors helps you find friends honestly because you see people that are going through the same stuff as you and if you're on a team that really does come in handy because most of the time there are some really good students that are in whatever class you're in. I know that one of our best football players, he's a math major and he's well.

He's a senior and he's really good at math. Had a 4.0 all through college if I ever had math questions for him, I would just go up to hat or go up to him about it and he'd say, hey, I don't know much about this, but go to this person. I'll give you their number or whatnot and that really is a big thing about having the team is. You're not just a bound by or by athletics and by your social life, like academically, like people will come and ask me about politics questions and just different things like that or Spanish.

Like he really becomes a or come to Swanee and build a really big network between your team.

Where you can really excel in your classes.

Yeah.

Thank you for for that question Solomon. So we have another one and this one is from Max. I like this one so I'm just gonna read it. How do you deal with sweaty clothes in your dorms and keeping their room from smelling gross? I know is probably differ from student to student, but yeah, anyone who wants to answer that one.

I can answer that. I leave my running shoes in the hallway.

Swanee, I mean I trust people around here. Swanee is definitely the type of school you can just like leave stuff and no one's gonna take it. So yeah, my running shoes are in the hallway usually.

And then yeah, I mean if my clothes are really sweaty.

When I leave them in my closet for too long, my whole room starts to smell so I just have to do my laundry frequently.

And yeah, I leave my windows open when it's nice out, I don't know.

So during football season, all of our football gear gets washed by the athletic department. So any of my practice here I don't have to worry about, but right now we're in spring football. We're not with that privilege at the moment, so I do have to do a little bit more extra washing and just my athletic clothes. And for me, it's just knowing when I'm going to like schedule out my laundry days and instead of, you know, forgetting about it. Like going into doing it.

And just being proactive about it.

Yeah, our uniforms also get washed, which is really nice. UM, for us so we just change after games and our coach takes them and actually washes them. Uh, but as far as in the dorm, Swanee is actually a great place for laundry because it's free. I know some universities you have to pay for laundry that is not the case here, as long as you bring your own soap that is not provided but free washer free dryer. If you go on like Sunday nights, it's gonna be pretty busy because that's just when people tend to like there. Do they like to do their laundry? So I try to shoot.

Or like Wednesday morning. So I did my laundry this morning and it's one of those things that I just put in my calendar each week. Once again, back to the Google Calendar, but I put it in my calendar each week and just do laundry on at the same time every day of the week. That way it's just easiest, and I know it gets done, and I know things are clean for practice.

Amber, you're way more organized than I was as a Swanee student. I I still use Google Calendar, but yeah, what do you putting laundry in into that? That's very smart? I like it.

Awesome, so I know we're running close to time, but does anyone have any last minute questions? Go ahead and put those in the chat, but great question so far.

This is a good one from Eppelein. So did you talk or can someone talk about how freshman either try out slash, choose different sports or also how that relates to club sports as well?

Yeah, so I can start with this one. 'cause cheerleading is actually a sport that Swanee does not recruit for. So there is a athletic, not athletic, a fair at the beginning of orientation. When you're a freshman that has like all the clubs. All the athletic clubs, cheerleading and all sorts of things that you can sign up for. And so we actually host here tryouts the night.

Of that activity is fair so that students hear about it and then they come. Try out and then we can be ready to start. Practice the first week of classes. So that's a really unique way to meet new people and to meet new activities and clubs that you potentially are interested in. There's a bunch of things that like I didn't know happened on college campuses like we just got a fly fishing club this past semester and I was like, Oh my gosh, if I was a freshman, I totally would have taken fly fishing and so I'm a little jealous, but I think it has like.

Over 50 booths at it every year. I know the fire Department's there, so there's just a whole wide a range of different activities, club, sports, etc that you can sign up for at that activities. Fair and usually they'll put you on an email list and email you when like their first meeting is and from then you can decide whether or not you want to continue to attend.

Yeah, and I know a lot of the club and intermural sports. You don't really have to. I think this is correct. I you don't really have to like sign up for them until you get to campus and then you might start getting emails about. Like are you interested in joining? So for both of those I know you do not need to try out for varsity sports. I think it depends on the sport in terms of like how competitive it is or how hard it is to get on the team.

For cross country and track I'm a walk on. I did not get recruited but I wanted to run and so I just reached out to the coach this summer before my freshman year and was like hi like I would love to join your team. How competitive is it? Like you know I asked a bunch of questions and he was so nice and he was like we would love to have you on the team. My times were not the best but he was like as long as you're interested in, you know working out this and coming to practice every day. We would love to have you.

So that wasn't very competitive. I did not need to try out other sports.

May require some type of tryout or recruit and that just depends and usually you can find contact information for each of the varsity sport coaches on the website. And if you are looking to play a certain varsity sport, talk to the coach and see what is required.

So for football, usually we don't have people try out.

Last year we did pick up a guy that was he's now a junior right now, but he got recruited to swaney at the start. That didn't really change how our coaches felt about it, since that whole two years it went by.

I think what went down for him was he just reached out to the coaches and I'm sure they had a little bit of connection just based off recruitment, but usually it's just like we go and I think they do like a little trial week is what I'd like to say. 'cause I've heard like soccer does something similar where you know they will throw you into practice and if it makes if it makes sense to add the player, they'll add the player but.

They're not always inclined to do that for football, especially like recruitment is a big thing for us. I know I want to say it was.

Either September or October of my senior year, like I felt filled out an inquiry to the university. We had this on our athletic pages on and it was.

In December when I got invited to come up to a preview day for football players exclusively, and then after that on.

Recruitment was pretty much just personalized with coaches. I remember I was talked to coach Randall and our former offensive coordinator who left my freshman year, but usually it'll just be like texting occasional calls. Players will call you up.

I know for me, especially last year I did a little bit of recruiting myself. They try to get players involved where they might go and give us a prospects number. I did a few football specific tours I'm supposed to give, some, some or some coming up on. Maybe some of you will be on those tours, but they really try to keep it personalized to football players and I know that's the way a lot of our other varsity sports go. But there are those options.

Still reach out and try and join the team later on, even if you weren't recruited.

Yeah.

Thank you yeah. Just to echo that really quickly. I know every single sport is definitely different, like in their process of recruiting and whether or not they take on walk ONS. But the commonality is definitely that all of the coaches are very willing to email you and chat with you and so really if you have even the slightest interest, I always tell students. Just send an email. You never know what type of openings there may be, what stage in their recruitment process there, in where in that season now of students.

As they're making different decisions across colleges that may open up a spot, you know the student doesn't come to Swanee, so definitely just reach out to the coach. As we mentioned, it's on our website, you just switch like swaneetigers.com really, and you can find all of their contact information. Just let them know who you are, your perspective student, and what sport you're interested in playing, and they'll be happy to tell you what steps further.

But I know we're running out of time here, but just kind of as we're wrapping up if each of you can just kind of give like a piece of parting advice of you know as what should someone consider as a as an incoming student athlete, and more specifically, a student athlete at Swanee? What's the biggest thing you think that they should know?

I can.

Yeah, as it go ahead, no, I started last time your turn.

Sorry OK, I would say it's very doable to be a student athlete. A successful student here and be involved in more things and have a social life. It's not for everyone, but it is very doable and it is a very rewarding experience for me. Being on a sports team and having like a team has been such a positive thing for me, especially as an incoming freshman like.

Before you kind of find your crowd, you already have a team and you have people to eat dinner with every night and you just grow closer. As time goes by and.

For me cross country is like my break. Every day I look forward to it, it's highlight of my day and if you felt like that about your sport in high school and want to continue in college or are trying something new, I definitely would recommend it.

So for me, uh, I think football for me. I always played a sport in high school and in middle school I was two Sport, 3 sport, athlete and coming to Swanee and having my decision time come in May. I was like you know, do I really want to? Am I ready to give up my sport and for me that wasn't what I wanted and like I wanted that team at aspect at Swanee.

And instantly our first weeks of camp in early August when we reports you get a great opportunity to be a part of a brotherhood. Again for me I know that come fall I'll have 80 other guys that I can really know that at the end of the day, if I'm in a pickle or anything, I've always got somebody on this campus who I can go to.

I can usually by the end of camp everybody knows each other's names. They make us go through camp and make sure you know like where somebody is from, where they're what their major is, if they have one yet.

First name, last name, and that's just not no debate or no debate. Our football coaches and I know all of our other coaches are really good about this. Like nobody is left behind. They don't tolerate any of that.

They don't want those kids that are going to have the egos that you know. I'm the only person that matters like my team. Isn't there, like if that's what you are like, we honestly don't really want you. At Swanee. We want that community and that our big thing. It's 1 E like EQ. Be our biggest value, ECCE quam bonum.

Where we all come together as a community really ties athletics together, and for me that's been the big part. Was I always knew that it's not about me. It's about my team. And you know, regardless of what people are saying about us during a season, if we're not doing the greatest like we know we're all we need and we have our great brotherhood together. And at the end of the day, we're going to come back and we're going to be stronger together and we're going to.

Go and connect with other students that might not be athletes, but we have that extra layer of brotherhood just off of being on campus and one thing our head coach coach Rondo likes to say is that the football team is the biggest fraternity on campus. I'm not apart of Greek life and for me it is my Greek life. I know I have the best fraternity on team or on this campus and people can try and fight me on that one. But you know, we're going to come out on top on that one.

Yeah, and then as a departing senior, thinking back four years ago my freshman year, I'm actually from Texas, and I'm the youngest of 6 and all of my siblings went to big state schools in Texas and three of them to play sports. And I just remember being in high school and being like two, I wanna play a sport in college 'cause it's such a time commitment and they weren't allowed they couldn't do anything else like my sister wanted to really be in Greek life, but because she was a swimmer she couldn't. 'cause she was too busy.

So it's just really worried about it. So coming to Swanee I knew I wanted to be a good student for your student athlete. Second, and I made that happen and then after then a few months in I was like I have.

Plenty of time to do other things and not only to do other things, but they hold leadership positions and these things. Like I said, I was president, my sorority etc. And and so I've held several leadership positions in the past four years. And, you know, I really identified as a good student and a strong athlete. And now I identify as so much more than that, and I really think that's money is the perfect place to be more than an athlete, you know, to be that strong athlete that you wanted to be in high school and continue to do that in college, but also just.

Figure out who you are outside of politics, whether that be academically or in Greek life or in social organizations, community service, etc. There are so many options here beyond being an athlete and the opportunity to have the time and the encouragement from other staff members and coaches to do other things is so strong and just really helps you find out who you are, which is a cool experience to have that I don't think my siblings got in college.

Well, thank you all so much for giving a little bit of your student experience.

As an athlete here on campus, hopefully you know to to all the attendees that there was some great info answered. A lot of your questions. If you all do have any other questions, here is my contact information. Also, I know Catherine mentioned preview day. We have a preview coming up so hopefully we're able to see you on campus dot also be another opportunity to make some other current students to meet some more members of our staff here in admissions.

Up to the tour. Get a lot of info about campus. But yeah, if you have any questions like I said, feel free to shoot me an email, get in contact with your admission counselor as well. You can find all of that on our website or you can schedule another one of those visits. But just in general, thank you all for joining us today. Hopefully this is all useful for you and again, thank you to each of our panelists. Really enjoyed hearing more of you. Also experiences, but thanks.