“You will never make it,” “You need to play club,” “You’re only a show-off.”

As the engines started to roar and the giant metal bird started to take flight my head spun in a million directions. My time had finally come to leave home and move abroad to embark a new challenge; against all odds. I started to grin, I had proved everyone wrong. I went against the current and decided against what everyone told me and stuck to my own believes.

I knew that my path to D-1 was harder by going my own way, but that is what felt right for me not what others said. I knew I would get to American University and my playing time would be almost non-existent my first year because of my decision but that’s what I wanted to do. However, the offer arrived and I grasped it with both hands and there is no way I’m letting others push me back for not listening to them.

All those negative remarks from back home are what push me every day to push through class and my training, followed by study hall and gym time. I want to be the best I can, to be able to prove everyone wrong and show them I wasn’t a showoff as some labeled me.

I got to DC it hasn’t been any different from what I envisioned, the team has flown to Florida for the first game if the season and I wasn’t named on the roster. Although I half expected I wasn’t going to travel with the team, it was still a hard pill to swallow. It left a bitter taste of agony inside. But the saying goes, it isn’t about how many times you fall but how many times you stand up and keep moving forward. The difference between being considered a player or legend is all the work done behind the scenes no one can see.

That is what is going to get me on that field and prove that I deserve to be there.

I might not play this season at all or maybe I will, I don’t know. But one thing I do know is that it won’t be for lack of effort. Someone can be better than me or more talented but no one can try harder than me.

I have battled against forces pushing me back and negative influences all my life and got to where I am today. So I won’t let one more negative feeling push me down. Instead this will be the drop that turns the glass and makes me become the player I know I can be.

This will be what pushes me to be great.

Sports have always been my thing. I started playing soccer when I was three. It was my first love, but I never thought 19 years later it would be the reason I landed my first job.

Growing up, I was a tomboy and always wanted to spend my time around anything to do with sports. With a fitness instructor mom, a football coach father, and an extremely athletic older brother, sports were always happening around our home. SportsCenter was the show of choice in the Conklin household and schedules were always made around weekday practices and weekend tournaments.

Blacksburg, Virginia became home for me after a late recruiting process. My mom went to Virginia Tech, and as a little girl, I dreamt of playing soccer in the ACC for the Hokies. My dad knew how badly I wanted to be a Hokie, but we kept to what extent of it from my mom knowing she wouldn’t be able to hold it in.

I’ll never forget leaving Blacksburg after a soccer camp in 2010 crying to my dad in the car about how badly I felt Tech was the place for me. I didn’t know why. I just had this feeling and knew it was where I needed to be.

My recruiting process was interrupted during my sophomore year in high school when my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. Soccer was my emotional and mental outlet, but searching for schools fell far down my to-do list.

It became an even less important “to-do” when he passed away January 20, 2011 when I was a junior in high school.

My dream came true a few months later when I received a call from Chugger Adair, the head coach of Virginia Tech, on my way home from an indoor track meet. He invited me up for a visit on campus. I remember trying my hardest to keep my cool, but once I hung up, I screamed at the top of my lungs with tears streaming down my face. My mom did the same when I called her after I caught my breath.

I visited campus once more and committed on April 2, 2011. Five years later, I look back at my four years on the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team and truly feel like I have accomplished my childhood dream; the only thing I ever really envisioned as a child.

I earned a scholarship after my freshman year, we made it to the College Cup my sophomore year, and I earned a starting position by my junior year. I had an assist on my first and last games on Thompson field, and even as a defender, I scored a collegiate goal.

It was more than I could have imagined when I was that little girl just wanting to be a part of the Virginia Tech soccer team.

Five years later, I also look forward to a new dream that came to life during my time in Blacksburg, one that finally answers the question of why Blacksburg seemed so special to me when I was in high school. Yes, it is a special place. I think anyone who has ever visited Blacksburg, Virginia will tell you that there is something about it. And they can’t quite say what it is; you just have to experience it for yourself.

For me, Blacksburg is the place where my dreams have come true. Both soccer and my dream of being a sports broadcaster – neither would have been accomplished or put me on the path to accomplishing them if it wasn’t for the time I spent at Virginia Tech.

Since sixth grade I wanted to be an orthodontist. I love teeth. I had braces when I was younger and loved them. I also like working with people and loved the idea of being able to help people with their confidence through helping them with their smile.

That aspiration came to an end after my first semester at school.

I was a straight-A student in high school and got a C in the science major biology class, which was a required class. I would make sure I got 100’s on all my homework grades because I knew I was going to fail the tests. After making a four-year plan of the classes needed to graduate, I called my mom, believing I was having a premature quarter-life crisis and knowing I wasn’t cut out to be a science major.

Then came the real issue of having to figure out what I wanted as my major and what I wanted do with my life after soccer. I felt like a failure because all I knew was that I liked sports and working with people, but that’s just what led me to broadcasting.

My dad’s brother, also my godfather, works in an industry surrounded by professional athletes and celebrities. To this day I call New Jersey my second home due to all the time we spent visiting him as a child. Visiting him threw me into a world where all these professional athletes were around.

Through those experiences I was reminded that, at the core, they are just normal people. The time we spent around different celebrities made me comfortable interacting with them. Charles Barkley once told me and my brother he would kick our asses if we didn’t do well in school – see – normal.

After realizing how important it was to work with people and how much I l loved the sports industry, I decided sports broadcasting would be a dream career for me.

As an athlete, I know my story, and I know every single athlete has his or her own story. I love that – I want to share those stories.

I switched my major to Multimedia Journalism, and one of my first assignments was to interview a professional in the field I wanted to work in. As a member of the athletic department, I knew people worked to cover the Tech sports’ games but didn’t know who they were or exactly what they did.

I googled “Virginia Tech sports broadcasting” and came across Bill Roth’s name. I knew the legendary name Bill Roth, Voice of the Hokies, as he had called Virginia Tech football and basketball for 27 years.

I didn’t want to seem like an inexperienced student by reaching out, even though I was, so I emailed Andrew Allegretta. Andrew is the Assistant Director of Broadcasting and voice of the baseball and women’s basketball teams.

Little did I know that email would be the beginning of an incredible journey.

I learned Andrew was in charge of the student broadcaster internship through IMG at Virginia Tech. When we met, he explained that they call all the Virginia Tech Olympic sports games, so his students were the ones covering my games. My interest was sparked, but it was going to be somewhat of a challenge to find my niche.

Andrew mentioned they had not had women in the internship before. He thought I would be a good addition to their soccer coverage, but more importantly, he was willing to work with me to create opportunities. I mentioned I was interested in sideline reporting and we worked together to create that position for ESPN3 games.

To this day I am so thankful to him for helping me create a position that would give me the best experience possible.

I started in the internship in the fall of my junior year doing color commentary for the men’s soccer games on HokiesXtra. Then Andrew was brave enough in the spring to put me on my first ESPN3 broadcast – covering Clemson vs. Virginia Tech baseball. I’m not sure why he trusted me, but it was probably because he knew I had been studying every possible sideline hit and post game interview done by Samantha Ponder that I could find.

That brings me to today; I have worked four ESPN3 games as a color commentator for men’s soccer and women’s volleyball and over 10 games on the sideline covering all different sports such as softball, baseball, women’s lacrosse, men’s soccer, and men’s and women’s basketball.

I also worked with Andrew and covered the 2015 Virginia Tech spring football game. By far one of the most surreal moments of my short career was working that game and interviewing Bud Foster on the sideline in Lane Stadium.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that they let little me cover ACC basketball and football, but I am forever indebted to the ones who trusted me enough to be out there.

After my senior season as a member of the soccer team, I really focused on post-graduate opportunities. As an ACC student athlete, there are opportunities within a post-graduate internship program called ACC Futures. There are six companies that hire ACC Futures Interns.

In order to get an interview, I had to pass the application round through my school and then once again through the ACC. By the time interviews came around I was one of 16 students interviewing for six openings with companies such as the ACC, the Orange Bowl, Fox Sports South, and Fox Sports Florida.

When I met with Fox Sports Florida, I knew they were one of my top choices. The job description was something that I was extremely interested in, and once I met with one of the producers within the company, I was hooked. We had a 30-minute interview and then a 15-minute break after the fact. I went into my interview a few minutes early and ended up missing my break because I was talking with them for so long.

One week later I got a call; they offered me a position at Fox Sports Florida as a production intern. At the time of the call, I was actually in San Francisco for Super Bowl 50 weekend with my brother and godparents. To this day, that was the best weekend of my life.

My story has highs and lows, but now I look back and know exactly why I cried to my dad about wanting to go to school at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech is where everything was made possible.

As for the future, I don’t know what it holds, but all I know is I am moving to Florida in a few months with an open mind and thankful heart, ready to enjoy the ride.

(Written by Andrea Fernandez)

I went to Brazil in the summer of 2015. Spent a lot of time meeting people and working on my Portuguese. I quickly trusted everyone I met there. The weekend came when I would travel alone to Rio De Janeiro, an idea that very few people encouraged.

I had started reading a book in Portuguese while I was there, Onze Minutos by Paulo Coelho. This book only helped to reinforce the fear everybody was causing me to feel about traveling to Rio alone. I started to feel like I could relate to the protagonist of the book. She was a naive young girl who was so excited to travel to Rio. She let what she thought was love and romance change her life and eventually she went with a man to Switzerland to become an exotic dancer.

I was starting to feel so anxious, I did not want to be scared, but a lonely and desperate feeling started to sneak up on me.

I could not decide if it was something telling me not to go, or if it was pushing me to go for an adventure. On my way to the airport in Belo Horizonte I started telling the taxi driver about where I was headed, and the first thing he said was “sozinha (alone)?!” He went on to explain that Rio is super dangerous; that people got stabbed and robbed there.

I started feeling nervous again. The possibilities of me getting robbed, stabbed, abducted, or becoming an exotic dancer kept growing in my head. But, I hid all these fears and landed in Rio with a brave smile.

The first day, I met some men on the beach and played soccer with them leaving my bags in the hands of a man running a coconut water stand. Nothing was stolen, and the only thing that got stabbed was the coconut he gave me for free. I continued playing soccer with another group, and this time, something unfavorable did happen.

I twisted and sprained my ankle. Luckily, I was in very good hands. The boys made sure I was well taken care of.

On the last day, I went with some new friends to the beach one last time and to make a complicated story simple, I got caught in a riptide. I will be completely honest; there was a moment that I thought I wouldn’t make it. I saw my friend waving at me to come back, but he wasn’t coming toward me so I thought nobody could help me.

The last thing I saw before a big wave took me was my friend coming my way. At that moment I felt hope and then suddenly we were both so far out in the ocean that we could no longer see the shore. I was so happy I was not alone, and the two of us were just laughing trying to stay afloat.

We did not know what we would do because we knew we could not go back into the waves. Within ten minutes a lifeguard comes out to us, and lends us his board to catch our breath, but he tells us that he will not be able to take us back- says he has alerted the helicopter.

WE WERE GOING TO BE SAVED BY A CHOPPER!

We were picked up in nets and then dropped off on the beach where everyone was surrounding us with their cameras out. The experience was crazy. I felt so in love with life, though I could not help but feel a sense of anxiety again; I felt confused. I had been warned about all the dangers of Rio – primarily of all the dangerous people and yet, the people in Rio are the ones who took the best care of me.

I realized from my trip to Brazil that if you are going to be fearful then get ready to fear just about everything – because anything can hurt you. Sand can hurt you; water can hurt you; pavement can hurt you; love can hurt you – anything can hurt you. That is why I gave up on fear and decided to live guided by my intuition and YOLO. Let’s see where that takes me.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

-Yoda

There are two important topics I have learned in Organizational Behavior of Sport Management that are very similar to experiences have had in my life. These two topics are the subject of Tribes from Seth Godin’s novel “Tribes” and Level 5 Leadership from Jim Collins’ novel “Good to Great”.

The definition of a tribe is “any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea.” Based on this definition, tribes exist in many different forms; whether they are businesses, sports teams, non-profit organizations, charity organizations, etc. However, tribes cannot be what they are without following the attributes of leadership, teamwork and generosity. Godin says that “Leaders who set out to give are more productive than leaders who seek to get.” In my senior year in high school, I have experienced tribes as well as leadership that perfectly demonstrates the attributes of tribes.

The tribes I was involved in were sports teams such as the Varsity Men’s Soccer Team as well as student tribes such as the Jackson National Honor Society. In my experience on the soccer team, our goal was to not only win games and the State and Shore Conference finals but to have a good time together and to help the freshman and junior varsity players become leaders. In my experience in the National Honor Society, our goal was to promote academic excellence, service to the community, and leadership for the real world.

These tribes are different regarding ideology and activities they do, but one thing they have in common is that they demonstrate the same attributes that make up an excellent tribe. 

Without these attributes, there would be no leadership or teamwork in the tribe and eventually the tribe would cease to exist. Not only did I have experiences of tribes throughout my life, I have also had experience with Level 5 Leadership. Level 5 Leadership is defined as Level 5 executives who build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. Through the experience I had with the Varsity Soccer Team and the National Honor Society, I had seen a bit of Level 5 Leadership. The soccer team’s captain had an agenda to lead the team to the State and Shore Conference Finals and win. Unfortunately, we did not win, but the captain did express personal humility which was a big and bold move for a captain.

That kind of leadership is what actually lead the team to the finals in the first place.

If only Rutgers Football and Men’s basketball had that kind of leadership and teamwork they would’ve been an excellent team that is very worth watching on television and spectating at the stadium and the court. Regarding the National Honor Society, the president followed the organization’s agenda to promote academic excellence and create great leaders which was the professional will of a Level 5 leader. There were some instances where followers didn’t follow their roles and broke a few of the organization’s rules, but the president took it upon himself to stop the disorder and take full responsibility for the organization’s mistakes.

The attributes of personal humility and professional will are considered a paradoxical blend because it is impossible to mix them into one single attribute. However, through my experience with both tribes, I was able to see the Level 5 Leadership in the team captain and the president of the National Honor Society. Both leaders didn’t let their ego get in the way of ambition for team and the organization and concern for their success. They also took responsibility for any mistakes or disorder that may have happened in the team and the organization.

This is why in today’s world we all need tribes and leadership like the tribes and leadership I have experienced. If we do not have them, then there would be nothing left to do in our lives and humanity would no longer function as a whole.

Throughout the world, there are very few organizations and even sports teams with Level 5 leaders. Level 5 leaders are explained to be an executive in whom extreme personal humility blends paradoxically with intense professional will, according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. Having such contradictory characteristics, coming across someone like this is very rare.

I have never run an organization, but I have been in charge of several sports teams. Not in the context of coaching, but rather as captain. During my senior year of high school, I was named captain of my soccer team and also the winter and spring track teams. Being captain of the soccer team is very different than being captain of the track teams. Soccer is much more of a team oriented sport, where track focuses more on individual accomplishments.

I have played soccer my whole life, like most people who choose to write a topic about sports. I was always one of the stand out players on any team I played for, from recreational sports to all the way up to collegiate soccer.

Every position on the soccer field is important in winning a game, but some are more important than others.

For example, in football, the quarterback is the most important player on the field. In soccer, the most important position is the sweeper (center defender), in my opinion. This, coincidentally enough, is the position I play. The sweeper is the player who directs everyone else on the field. The sweeper tells the other players when to step up to the ball, when to pass, when an opposing player is closing in on them, and any other direction that helps them win the game. In addition, the sweeper is the glue that holds the entire defense together. The sweeper is the last line before the opposing team gets to the goalkeeper. In my eyes, it is my job to do everything in my power to protect the goalkeeper and prevent any shots on goal as well as to keep my team motivated to win.

Jim Collins identifies the characteristics common to Level 5 leaders as humility, will, ferocious resolve, and the tendency to give credit to others while assigning blame to themselves. In my senior year, I feel that I exhibited a majority of those characteristics while acting as team captain. Each game we had, I did everything in my power to keep the opposing team away from my goalkeeper and the ball out of our half of the field. Anytime we lost a game or the opposing team scored a goal, it would crush me. I felt that I failed my team, failed my defense and failed my goalkeeper.

It did not matter the reason, as the captain, I felt any type of loss personally.

When we started our run in the state tournament, my coach asked me to start playing another position since our forwards were finding it very difficult to score.  The strategy was to have me play the first half of the game as sweeper to allow my defense to settle into the game, then once the second half began, I would move up to forward. The switch was a key catalyst in changing the way we played our games and helped us win the state sectional championship that year.

I had to ensure my defense was comfortable without me at the helm as I had been there for four years. I also had to be sensitive to the forwards that my moving up was not because any wrong doing on their end, but a change in strategy to surprise our opposition.  As each game went on, my field presence and playing defined the game. The local newspapers would interview me after every game and call me on weekends to discuss how the change in our lineup was driving us closer and closer to the state championship.

As flattered as I may have been, I never took the credit for myself. I always said, and truly believed, that the only reason the switch up was successful was because I had an extremely capable team supporting me. When I moved to forward, that was the first time in 4 years that the defense line had a different sweeper and they were able to hold their own. That was a huge reason we were successful.

Every player on my team was the reason we were successful, not just me.

I always had a tendency to deflect all the credit that came with our wins to my entire team, not just me. But on the other hand, whenever we would lose, it was no one else’s fault but my own. I constantly made sure that my team knew we would not have been successful if it was not for everyone’s contribution.

I was not a perfect Level 5 leader, but looking back on my experiences and learning about what it means to actually be a Level 5 leader, I realized that I had moments that made me feel like one.