On Thursday, December 3, 2015, Â鶹´«Ã½ athletes, students, faculty, alumni, family, and friends joined each other for the sixth annual women in leadership spotlight dinner located in the McInnis room of the Â鶹´«Ã½ Student Union Building. The evening included several presentations from guests including guest speaker Kathie Sanderson, TD district vice president Georgette Moffatt, as well as several student-athletes and coaches.
Since the dinner’s inception in 2010, this year’s event had the largest attendance to date. The student-athletes from the women’s volleyball and basketball teams hosted the event with over 350 people in attendance.
Inspiring stories
This year’s event was presented by TD Bank Group. TD’s district vice-president, Georgette Moffatt, spoke of the value the event held by way of sparking discussions. She expressed how this event demonstrated the great leadership that is developed in athletics and that TD wants to work alongside those leaders.
Director of Varsity Athletics Tim Maloney launched the evening with several accolades to the women’s volleyball and basketball teams. "Tigers strive for excellence in academics, athletics, and in the community," he said. This fact is proven from the great deal of volunteering the team members are involved with, totalling over one hundred hours all together. Their academic performance is not to go unnoticed. As well as offering their time to help others, over half of the players from last year’s teams earned Academic All-Canadian status for their hard work in school.
Anna Stammberger, head coach of the women's basketball team, credited her players as being "strong academic leaders who take their responsibilities on and off the court very seriously." The players are not only devoted to their team, but also to making a change in the community.
Student-athletes Ainsley MacIntyre and Emma Ciprick are members of the Student Athletes Mental Health Initiative (SAMHI). SAMHI aims to inform people more about mental illness and to break the stigma surrounding the topic. A fourth-year Neuroscience student from women’s basketball, MacIntyre expressed that "as student-athletes and leaders in our community, it gives us a platform to create change."
MacIntyre and Ciprick, as well as other Â鶹´«Ã½ student-athletes, are starting a fundraiser with the goal of breaking the stigma surrounding mental health. In the winter, Â鶹´«Ã½ student-athletes will be giving people the chance to either make a ten dollar donation or make ten snow angels to encourage conversation about mental health in the community.
Sharing lessons from experience
Guest speaker Kathie Sanderson Morgan shared many stories about her three loves in life: her family, her athletics, and her career. Morgan was raised in York Point, Pennsylvania and played for the Â鶹´«Ã½ basketball team starting in 1993. She credits many of her accomplishments to those around her for supporting her in everything that she did because she knew that she could do anything if she worked hard for it and was surrounded by those who supported her.
Sanderson was part of the basketball team when they won the AUAA (now AUS) championship in her third year of school, which she also said was her best experience as a Â鶹´«Ã½ Tiger. However, the skills she gained, such as leadership and teamwork, are what she credits for bringing her success in her career today.
Sanderson works as an aircraft pilot in the Caribbean on a six-person crew that performs search and rescue missions and monitors trafficking of drugs, people, etc. among other duties. She states that "the importance of the mission is how well we work together." Since the teams must use headsets in the aircraft, the use of verbal communication is vital. She credits much of her ability to lead her team and communicate with them so effectively to her experience playing, leading, and communicating with her basketball teams.
When asked by the athletes what her best piece of advice for student-athletes would be, she said: "Don’t underestimate what you’re learning and what you’re doing here at Â鶹´«Ã½ because it will contribute to who you are in the future."
The Tigers would like to thank all of those who attended and to everyone who helped make the sixth annual event a great success.