First Year Family Weekend

First-Year Family Weekend

A couple weekends ago was First-Year Family Weekend, a time in which families of first-year students are able to get a taste of their child’s life at Dartmouth. Our parents and siblings arrive on campus, receive info about the scheduled events and activities, and experience a beautiful, spring weekend at Dartmouth! One of the many activities sponsored by the school was the Tower Room Tour. Students and their families are able to climb through the tower of Baker-Berry library to experience an incredible view of the entire campus and its surrounding beauty. Kayden climbed the tower with her mom and younger sister, and was able to take brochure-worthy pictures of the Dartmouth campus! 

Another school-sponsored event was the Family Weekend Cookout behind the Baker-Berry library. All of us freshman volleyball girls were there with our families, chatting and eating delicious barbeque, while enjoying the splendorous spring weather. After the cookout, many lectures were held, ranging from talks on Off-Campus Programs to academic department lectures. In this way, the parents become more familiar with the opportunities available to Dartmouth students, and the students are able to showcase their bright expectations for the future.

Later that night, Dartmouth’s a capella groups gathered together for a performance known as the A Capella Showcase. Families and students got the chance to listen to some of Dartmouth’s most talented singers in their element. On Saturday morning, Dartmouth Football played in their annual spring game! Many of the volleyball players and families went to watch, enjoying the warm weather while cheering on fellow Dartmouth athletes and friends. 

On the last night, the volleyball 16s gathered together for a tasty Italian dinner at Stella’s with their families. Most of us wanted to showcase Hanover’s delicious dining throughout the weekend; Katie even took her parents to the original King Arthur Flower in Norwich, Vermont, a five-minute drive from campus. King Arthur Flower is America’s oldest flour company, and Dartmouth has their very own K.A.F. shop in the library, where students can buy the most amazing pastries, ciders/teas, and sandwiches! All in all, First-Year Family Weekend was an eventful, tasty, and beautiful spring weekend spent in the company of our parents, siblings and teammates.   

Alli

Allison Brady '16

Spring Competition

This past weekend (April 13) it was so great to play with the team again. Getting to see everyone’s competitiveness surge out once more was very exciting, especially to see it as a precursor to next seasons attitude. All the hours and hours of very very very early morning conditioning, practices and weight lifting is starting to show in our play. I never thought I would be capable of getting up almost everyday before the sun is even out. But regardless of the hour of the day, the team seems so driven to improve from our last season. Some of my favorite moments out on the court is when we have been tediously and meticulously working on little things – like deep corner shots, diving out six feet for a ball, etc. – and suddenly you see it click in a game like scenario. My teammates at times seem startled by my high-pitched squeals, but sometimes I just can’t hold in all the excitement.

The recent warm-ish weather has allowed us to finally wipe out the sundresses and show off our new bruises from our awesome defense work. At times I feel like it’s almost a competition to see who has the most bruises. But I feel like other people on campus must thing we are in some sort of fight club.

We also had our banquet this past weekend- a very bittersweet moment. On one hand it was great to eat all the incredible food at the Hanover inn and see everyone with her parents and reminisce on the great moments last season. But on the other hand it was very emotional hearing the seniors farewell speeches and thinking that’s only three more seasons away for me! I’m definitely nowhere near ready to a) say goodbye to volleyball and b) go into the real world.

Overall I think this spring off-season has been great. I can feel everyone’s motivation and commitment getting stronger each passing day. I can’t wait to see it translate into our upcoming season!

Kayden Cook '16

Learning to Lead: Dartmouth Peak Performance

DP2 (Dartmouth Peak Performance) Leadership Exercise

We all woke up a little early last Wednesday for our ‘Leadership Exercise’. We had about as much information going into it as you have now. That it was a leadership exercise, and that it required rainboots. We all packed into cars, and headed to base camp, a pullout on the side of the road. Mist was lying low all around us. It was getting intense. Steven Spaulding, a.k.a. Dartmouth’s leadership advisor pulled aside Elisa Scudder, a ‘14 middle, and I to get the lowdown on the morning’s activity. We each had to lead a group through the New England forest to a clearing with a large stump, from which we would find a camera attached to a tree in the surrounding woods. Trick is, you had to travel in groups of 2, and had to pre-select the tree you were going to look at from the center, go look on that tree and if it wasn’t there head back and do it again. No looking around in the forest! Then we would cross the Appalachian Trail, find a rope tied to a tree and do a variation on the human knot challenge. The first group back to the cars wins. Go!

Both groups ran through the forest to the clearing, which ended up being more of a marsh. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this is a really rocky marsh!”, only to find out later that in fact I was stepping on unfrozen ice chunks left over from winter. We all turned out to be exemplary icy swamp muckers however, and my group raced through the camera finding mission with the help of Holly and Kayden, 16’s, who found the tree on their second time out. We then raced to part two of the mission and completed the knot task, but soon realized we had dropped an essential item (one of the ropes) on our way. We combed the forest, not wanting to give up our lead, and after a long and fearful 10 minutes we heard a coyote call of success and started our race back to the car. Albeit the icy water and long trudging all of our faces were lit up with smiles.

Having that kind of morning is awesome in many ways. First I love nature and being out there with the mist, flying geese and rising light was gorgeous. Secondly, walking into my statistics class at 10 am after that while everyone else had just grabbed breakfast in the cafe made me feel pretty accomplished. But most importantly, the leadership exercise was awesome because it enabled our team to work together in new novel situations and teach us new things about what it meant to lead and to serve. We learned a clear definition of leadership, and were able to see where we fell short. Fortitude and a positive attitude are particularly important to our team because of the high standard of focus and dedication we all agreed was necessary to take us to the level we want to be playing at. I know the team is so grateful for the opportunity to learn these lessons and to have such great resources available to us through the Dartmouth Peak Performance program.

Till next time!

Lucia

Kaira's tryout for the USA Junior National Team