GEORGETOWN, TEXAS - College students from around the state of Texas converged at the Waco Convention Center for the annual Texas Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (TACSM) convention. Southwestern University Athletics highlighted the event with multiple student-athlete participants.
Pirate athletes Blake Sitterly, Riley Barlage, Samantha Martinez, Grey Wagner, Alicia Peters, Sam Anderson, and Katie Whitehead found themselves among predominantly graduate and doctoral program students. Despite being surrounded by their more experienced colleagues, Southwestern's student-athletes achieved success at the conference.
Southwestern kinesiology department professor, Dr. Vanessa Mikan, was the overseeing faculty member of many of the attending students. Dr. Mikan had nothing but praise for these students' accomplishments.
"As a department, we are really proud of our students. They represented the University in a professional manner, so much so that we as a faculty could just stand back and enjoy. They were just so impressive." stated Dr. Mikan.
Women's swimmer Riley Barlage and men's lacrosse player Blake Sitterly worked together to complete 120 hours working in an independent and assisted living facility in Georgetown. Barlage and Sitterly learned to teach fitness sessions for older adults as well as work with patients with dementia and Alzheimer's. The two completed these hours while also working on their experiential capstone. For their experiential capstone, they assessed static flexibility and balance training in older adults who participate in group fitness sessions versus those who do not. Sitterly and Barlage's abstract, along with Peters, were chosen as a finalist out of all judge-submitted abstracts.
In total, at the conference, only eight undergraduate abstracts were chosen. Southwestern ranked in the top eight for all judged abstracts scored and was the only non-graduate school program to rank, a truly remarkable accomplishment for the University and the athletes involved.
Men's track athlete Grey Wagner and his partner Cole Peck presented "Body Composition and Bone Mineral Density of NCAA DIII Athletes at Southwestern University." Senior Grey Wagner gave insight into his TACSM experience.
"My favorite part of the conference was actually conversing with my peers and professors. It was great to be able to interact with my professors outside of the classroom. As a senior, I've learned so much from the Kinesiology Department during my time here at SU, and this was an amazing opportunity to pick their brains and get to know them better," explains Wagner. "It was an amazing opportunity getting to present my capstone at TACSM."
Volleyball player Katie Whitehead and her partner Shannon Dyke completed an internship with the citizens at the Brookwood in Georgetown (BiG). BiG is a community that provides meaningful work, a sense of belonging, dignity, and respect for adults with functional disabilities. Whitehead and Dyke completed the Adaptx certification program that allowed them to design and implement physical activity programming with the residential citizens of BiG. Their capstone assessed components of fitness to demonstrate the effectiveness of individualized training for this special population. Whitehead and Dyke found evident increases in all levels of fitness as well as self-efficacy during these training sessions.
Men's swimmer and SCAC Elite 19 award winner Sam Anderson was invited to receive the Texas ACSM Major of the Year award, which recognizes an outstanding undergraduate student in exercise science from each of the undergraduate degree-granting institutions in Texas. Anderson is a highly accomplished student-athlete in the pool and in the classroom. He completed the SCOPE research program with Southwestern's Dr. Scott McLean, was president of the "Exercise is Medicine" student organization on campus and has previously presented work at the National ACSM conference.
The kinesiology department at Southwestern has encouraged these students to become active in the community, push their academic abilities beyond what they thought possible, and help others while also conducting their research. It is Southwestern's goal as a University and Athletic Department to promote high-impact learning experiences for all its students. These student-athletes who attended TACSM will continue to exemplify what can be accomplished in the classroom while competing in collegiate athletics.