Sweet Briar College Magazine - Spring 2017

Playing
Out of Position
Brenda Schwartz
Jessie Melrose
Jessie Melrose was drawn to Sweet Briar
for its riding program, but the athletic
department noticed something else in her
background: a year of cross country in
high school.
So they recruited her for the cross
country team in the fall, then persuaded
her to play lacrosse in the spring.
“I love sports,” says Jessie, a first-year
student from Virginia Beach. “It keeps me
busy. It’s kind of a nice break from schoolwork.
And it’s nice having another group
of people you can go to with problems.”
As Sweet Briar builds back its student
body, student athletes are taking on more
sports and more responsibility to ensure
the College remains competitive whether
on the playing field, on the tennis court, or
in the pool.
“If it wasn’t their main sport, they were
probably playing out of position,” says Athletic
Director Teresa Boylan. “To jump in
and play on a team when you know you’re
down in roster numbers or to come into
a team where you’ve never played before,
that’s difficult. That’s a challenge.”
Boylan, who first came to Sweet Briar in
2008, left after the closing was announced
for a job at Hollins. But she returned in
July 2015 when the College was saved.
“I started calling coaches back to see
where they were,” she recalls. “I and a couple
of the other coaches called our teams,
student athletes, just bringing the band
back together so to speak.”
When we talked to students we asked
them to do more. “We’d tell them, ‘I know
you’re a lacrosse player, but we need you
to play a second sport. Can you consider
playing field hockey? Can you consider
playing soccer?’ ”
Molly Van Buren was a senior in the
fall of 2015 ready to play her fourth year of
field hockey. But the team had lost many
of its key players. So some softball and
lacrosse players crossed over to play field
hockey, and a couple of freshman players
joined the team.
“The players who had previously been
on the team helped the new players learn
the game,” Molly recalls. “Since everyone
was athletically inclined, they picked up
the rules and movements pretty quickly,
and because the athletic department is so
supportive of each team, we had already
known all the people joining from other
teams.”
The same thing happened when swimming
season started. “We had one new
swimmer who hadn’t swam since she was
11 years old,” Molly says. “She put in the
time and effort to improve her strokes and
work on her turns, and while she wasn’t
as comfortable in the water as the rest of
us she was there early every day to get
ready. The team welcomed her and we all
helped her with things if she asked, and
she improved tremendously by the end of
the year.”
Alumnae also helped: attending games
and providing treats and other support for
athletes. Tracy Stuart ’93 volunteered as an
assistant field hockey coach.
“The alumnae support was just off the
charts, nothing I’d ever seen before,” Boylan
says. “The reconnection with alumnae
and faculty and staff was positive.”
In the fall, Jessie Melrose estimates she
spent two hours a day, five days a week on
cross country practice, as well as riding
three times a week, for two hours each
morning with the Intercollegiate Horse
22 SBC.EDU | SWEET BRIAR MAGAZINE