Month: March 2022

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IM and IF Sports

If you are a retired high school or even college athlete, like myself, you will find yourself itching to get back on the field or court and play sports again. Grove City has some of the best intramural sports out of any school in the country. The College offers almost every sport you can think of, and if the sport is not offered then you can get a group of people together to try and get it organized for the upcoming season. I have personally participated in football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, and dodgeball.  There are plenty of opportunities to get involved in IM sports because there are two different seasons during the academic year. Also, another great thing about IM sports is that not everything is a physically demanding activity. There are also IM sports for Euchre, bowling, spikeball, and even a couple of video games. IM sports have become a very inclusive thing here on campus and allow all students to enjoy some friendly competition.

There are also Intrafraternal sports for those that are in fraternities. IF sports are just like IMs but on another level of competition. There is an IF cup that is awarded to the winning fraternity after the IF season, which lasts all year long. The sports that fraternities will play in the fall are football, basketball, and volleyball. This fall was pretty condensed so there might be more sports in the fall of 2022. Then, in the spring semester, there is softball, dodgeball, and soccer. The competition of IF sports is much greater than IM sports because you are playing for your fraternity and competing towards winning the IF cup at the end of the year.

Whether you are competing in IM sports, IF sports, or both you will have a great time and as a freshman, it is an amazing way to go out and make friends. I made a football and basketball team with some guys on my hall who I did not really know and we are still friends in our last semester of college.

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Athletics at Grove City College

There are so many ways to find community at GCC, and one of those is by participating in varsity sports on campus. I played on the baseball team here at GCC, and that was a great way for me to find an instant community and friends on campus. A couple of the questions that I would get were if I had time for other things on campus, and what the commitment level is for sports at the Grove. I am going to try my best to give you some perspective on what it is like to be an athlete on campus and what else you can do while at Grove City.

Do you have time for anything else on campus?

As an athlete, there are many opportunities to get involved on campus, both within the athletic department and outside of it as well. While playing baseball, I participated in Greek life, Orientation Board, Homecoming committee, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. You have a lot of time throughout the season and the offseason to participate in many things on campus, that way you are not just subject to one activity during your time at college.

What is the commitment level like?

The majority of athletes on campus have a practice every day and then will have a time set to go to the gym and lift with your team. However, there are activities that each team will do for team building, which can help with gaining a great community early in your college career. As for the commitment level of collegiate athletes, I am a firm believer that you will get what you put into it. No matter what you invest in on-campus you can gain a great community and get a lot out of it. If you decide to put all of your time into your team and sport then you will get a lot out of it, but if you want to prioritize other things while playing sports that is definitely possible as well. Grove City athletics are great, and when you participate in them then you will have a community that you will cherish for a long time.

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Green Meadows: A Golf Course Review

Spring at Grove City is one my favorite times on campus. The cold and snowy days are quickly replaced with the warm and pleasant breeze of Western Pennsylvania. As the weather becomes more lively, so does the campus. There is a surge of students outside to enjoy the warmth, either by studying outside or just hanging out with some friends.

One of my favorite things to do when the weather shifts is to find some friends and play one of Western Pennsylvanians many golf courses. Last week, I ventured to Green Meadows Golf Course in Volant, PA. Green Meadows is a short 20-minute drive from campus and offers a fantastic golf experience for golfers of any skill level. Green Meadows was first opened for play in 1960, so its fairways and greens have had time to reach maturity.

Green Meadows provides a test to every golfer. The course layout is a tight course with four dogleg fairways and some grass bunkers. There are sand bunkers that come into play on most holes. The sloped greens are fast, and three of them are undulating. Par for the course is 72. From the forward tees the course measures 4,680 yards and around 6,500 from the back tees.  The longest hole on the course is hole 12, a par-5 that plays to 587 yards. The shortest hole on the course is #9, a par-3 that plays to 170 yards from the back tees.

From my experience, I would recommend watching out for #7, a 438 yard par-4 challenge and the #1 handicap hole on the course. Hole #7 provides a tee shot that favors a high draw due to trees that line the left portion of the landing area and dogleg fairway. It can be tempting to cut down the fairway and play over the trees but attempting this is dangerous and can often make your second approach shot more difficult. My success on this hole has been from playing a long iron to widest part of landing area and playing another long iron into green.

My favorite thing about the course is its lush fairways and rough. Last week was not my first time playing Green Meadows, and every time I have played in the past, the greens have been rolling and well-kept, and fairways are manicured and always lush. For $15 for 9 holes, the experience is unbeatable.

In the next coming weeks I will be providing more course reviews of local Grove City golf courses. Playing recreational golf is just one of the many ways that students can get off campus and enjoy the beautiful weather. I cannot wait for more students to experience the great time that Green Meadows offers.

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Inside Wolverine Athletics Podcast: Coach Melissa Lamie

In this week’s episode of Inside the Wolverine Den, coach Melissa Lamie talks about the definition of culture and what is looks like to have a successful culture. With almost 30 years of experience at Grove City College, she has seen the growth and change of the College over time. Lamie gives an insider’s perspective to the Grove City College Women’s Soccer team and how they have created a team atmosphere that strives for success on the field, in the classroom, and for God’s kingdom.

Inside the Wolverine Den: Understanding Culture and The Importance of Culture

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Inner City Outreach – Fall Semester

Going into freshman year, I wasn’t involved in a lot of groups or activities on campus because of COVID-19 restrictions. Over the course of my freshman year, campus started to slowly make changes to try and go back to “normal.” As the spring semester ended, I knew that I wanted to join a group or different activities on campus to have community and get to know other students.

Coming back to school in the fall, I was part of OB (Orientation Board). It gave me the opportunity to grow closer with people I didn’t know very well and provide community to incoming freshmen. One of my friends from Orientation Board asked me what I was doing for fall break, and she proceeded to talk to me about an upcoming ICO trip. ICO is also referred to as Inner City Outreach, a small mission trip led by Grove City College students, taking place in different cities in multiple states, as well as a few countries. The only trip happening over fall break was ICO Aliquippa, and it was four days long. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and have always been told that Aliquippa has a reputation for being unsafe and filled with crime. This made me very hesitant to want to go on the trip, but after talking to upperclassmen who went on the trip and listening to their experience, I decided that I wanted to go. I did not have high expectations, nor did I know what to expect before going on the trip. All I knew was that I was going out of my comfort zone and that made me very nervous and scared.

During the trip, we worked with a local church, Mount Carmel, and they felt like family at the end of the trip. We spent two days working on Janice’s house, a fellow believer. We got to paint her porch, do yardwork, and build her a new staircase to get into her house. The best part about working on her house was spending time with her, hearing about her life and how God has worked in it. We also got to spend time in the different plans (housing communities) playing with kids (lots and lots of face paint), doing Bible studies, handing out clothes, and serving food to families. We worked with a non-profit organization Communicycle that collected donated bikes to repair them and then give them to kids who do not have bikes. We spent time learning how to repair bikes and would drive around Aliquippa, handing out bikes to children.

Every night on the trip, the group would take time to reflect on the day and talk about their high and low and an instance of where they saw God that day. Asking these questions helped us to keep God at the center of our mind and of the trip. Looking back on the trip, I realized that Aliquippa is different than how it is perceived. People see Aliquippa as being a broken town with a high crime rate, but after spending time there, I see it in a different way. Although they do not have a lot, they have a strong community. They know people in different plans and all of their neighbors, treating each other like family. On the trip, I saw how present God was in each activity we did and how He is working through the people of Aliquippa. I cannot wait to go back to Aliquippa for the spring ICO trip and continue to share who God is to people. If you are looking for community at Grove City College, ICO trips provide amazing community with fellow students who want to share who God is with others!

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My Experience Running a Business

Last semester, August 2021 to December 2021, I was in an Entrepreneur class called E-Commerce. The class focused on starting a business and selling a product in-person and online. I was on a team of four people, and we created Geodesy Bracelets, personalized, hand-stamped bracelets to help you remember your favorite place or phrase.

At the beginning of the class, every student pitched an idea and the class would choose their top five favorite ideas and form teams based on those ideas. As my team formed, we had an idea for the bracelets and assumed that it would be easy to make and good for people to buy. We wanted to have a metal oval with coordinates or words stamped on it, with multicolored cords to wrap around the wrist. We ordered all the needed materials and made the prototype, only to see that we did not like anything about it. We kept asking ourselves, “Who is going to buy this bracelet? There’s no way they’re going to want to spend more than $3 on this.” We faced a problem of having the prototype look and feel of low-quality. We could not figure out how else we could stamp coordinates or words and almost came up with an entirely different business idea. We all had to decide if we wanted to do a new business idea or pivot from our original idea. We decided to stick with our original idea, and we pivoted a lot from it, which only made our products better quality and more popular to customers. As we made our products, we created a website and social media accounts to allow customers to shop all of the products, read customers’ stories, and stay updated about sales. At the end of the semester, my group donated all of our profits to a Christian summer camp, Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which allows young athletes to live in community with each other and grow in their faith. We had personal connections to Summer’s Best Two Weeks, which made us work harder to help get more donations!

My experience with Geodesy Bracelets has been awesome, and I loved the class. The class allowed me to run a business in a short time and see the behind the scenes of it. I learned a lot about working with a team and discovering different ways to pivot when faced with a challenge. Starting a business is very time consuming and at times, it feels like it is not worth it. However, this class showed me that running a business is worth all the time and effort. Why? It is because you hear customer’s stories of why they purchased from your business or what their customized order meant to them.

When looking at different classes to take at Grove City College, whatever major you are, this class gives you a real-world experience of running your own business. It has been one of my favorite classes that I have taken.

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Inside Wolverine Athletics Podcast: Coach Chelle Fuss

In this week’s episode of Inside the Wolverine Den, we dive deeper into the topic of what it means to be a coach. Our guest, coach Chelle Fuss, talks about her experience as the Grove City College Women’s Basketball head coach. Coach Fuss covers a variety of topics from different types of coaching to the difficulties of being a Christian coach and what it is like for her athletes. You will not want to miss this one.

Inside The Wolverine Den: Importance of Coaching/ Faith Based Coaching

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Work-College Balance

For as long as I have known Mickey Clarey he has been his own boss. As a Entrepreneurship major that is something that I am striving for. But to be able to manage the work load that he does while being a full-time student he has some tricks.

In this interview I discover how Mickey got started, and cover everything to where he is now. His clientele has been growing each year, to the point where it can no longer be accomplished with a one man team. Mickey answers questions about how he had to bring others on to make sure that he could handle his school work, while properly running his business.

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How a Gap Year Might Benefit You

There is not a better person to interview on this topic than Justin Corbin. Justin has now taken two gap years, each for their own reason. In the interview he will shed light on how this has impacted his decision on his major, his outlook at college, and why a gap year may or may not be for you.

Justin decided to take his parents advice and take a gap year directly after highschool. He decided to do so once again when there was uncertainty surrounding the college experience because of Covid-19. I encourage all who watch this video to think about this topic seriously, you only do college once so it is very important to get the most out of it while here.

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Inside Wolverine Athletics Podcast: Coach Alec Jernstedt

In this podcast episode of Inside The Wolverine Den with your host Maggie Williams, we dive into the topic of creating a winning team. This week’s guest, coach Alec Jernstedt, gives an inside look into the Grove City College Men’s Lacrosse team. Previously an assistant coach at Duke University, coach Jernstedt understands what it takes to strive for success. With only being established as an official team since 2018 at Grove City, the lacrosse team has truly made a statement with conference championships and NCAA appearances. How have they created a winning atmosphere? What is it like to be in a competitive atmosphere as a Christian? What are the characteristics of a winning team? All of these questions and more are coming next.

Inside The Wolverine Den: Creating a Winning Program