Division III is remarkable. The student-athletes who attend and compete at DIII colleges do so without monetary compensation and often in conjunction with rigorous academic schedules and a good deal of extracurricular activities thrown in as well. Over the course of my own collegiate career, I shared pool space with athletes who developed robots, helped with political campaigns or competed in foreign countries. It is these stories and these athletes who best exemplify what it means to be a student-athlete at the Division III level.
What follows is a tribute to the athletes of Division III, showcasing seniors from across the country who have brought their own passion to swimming and academia. This series of articles strives to capture some of the many incredible, interesting or quirky things our swimming and diving seniors have done while out in the wider world.
All hail Division III.
Girls Who Code
Pomona Senior Victoria Gyorffy (Image courtesy of Pomona-Pitzer Athletics)
Pomona senior Victoria Gyorffy spent her summer working to help young women change the face of the computer, tech and engineering industries.
Gyorffy – a mathematical econ major – applied for a position at the Twitter headquarters in California for a summer job. The Twitter project is called “Girls Who Code,” which is a pretty good description of the program.
Girls Who Code is an organization aimed at reaching gender parity in computing fields. Their mission is to reach out to young women and inspire them through exposure to computer science education. The Department of Labor projects that about 1.4 million computer specialist jobs will exist in 2020. Anecdotal data suggests that about a third of students who gain exposure to computer science will continue in the field. Therefore, to establish gender parity, 4.6 million girls will needs some form of computer science exposure. To help realize this goal, Girls Who Code aims to provide computer science education and exposure to one million young women by 2020.
So, how did Gyorffy end up mentoring some young women for eight weeks out of the summer?
“[Girls Who Code] actually had a job listing on our career website at Pomona College,” Gyorffy said. “Originally the position was just for a program intern […] working in the office and doing more logistical stuff.” Gyorffy said she had heard about the program prior to applying, and because of the good things she had been told, decided to apply for that office position. “When I actually talked to someone from the company, they saw that I was a computer science minor and had some experience in coding,” she explained. “So she actually asked me if I would rather work as a TA.”
Given the choice, Gyorffy chose to work directly with the high school girls rather than sitting behind the scenes in an office. And what a whirlwind she signed up for. “Class started at nine o’clock, so I needed to get there around eight thirty, for preparation for the day,” she said. Then there was breakfast in the cafeteria with the girls. Morning lessons in programming language. Speaker presentations – which formed a large chunk of the day: “A big portion of the program was actuallyjust bringing in motivation+bnnal, inspiration people, so we had a lot of engineers, […] entrepreneurs – and all of them were women.”
Post lunch there was more classroom time. “I did a little less teaching and more classroom logistical stuff,” Gyorffy said. She was also focused heavily on mentoring the young women and fostering their interest in computers, science and technology.
Included in the Girls Who Code program were also field trips. “Once a week we tried to get a field trip planned,” Gyorffy said. The “field trips” were unlike anything you’d expect as standard high school fare. These young women had the opportunity to program robots, build websites and tour the big name tech companies like Google, Facebook and AT&T. “They had a chance to look around, maybe have a Q&A panel, […] just to expose them to all the opportunities that are out there.”
Whether this experience will play a large role in Gyorffy’s future is still up in the air. “I definitely had a great time,” she said. The near future doesn’t seem likely to see her back, though, just because the experience – while eye-opening and enjoyable – doesn’t play so well with her major or future career plans.
“I definitely want to stay in the tech industry,” Gyorffy said. “I have more of a business background […] I don’t think I have enough of a science background to really be a full time engineer,” she explained.
The business interest of Gyorffy’s manifested itself in prior years at Pomona. The school has a student run investment fund to teach its undergrads about investment opportunities. “I’m not super involved anymore,” Gyorffy admitted, “but I used to be involved in [,,,] the Sagehen Capital Management.” The money in the fund – about 1.7 million according to Gyorffy – started as a donation by an alum. “And now students are in charge of the finances so we can invest in different companies and startups.”
The group operates pretty democratically, with students researching investment opportunities and presenting their findings to the group before putting the choice to a vote. “It’s gotten some pretty positive returns on the investment, so I think it’s grown over the years,” Gyorffy added.
Speaking of positive returns – Gyorffy will be returning as a previous NCAA qualifier from the 2013-14 season, and her biggest goal for this year is to make it back to the meet. “Last year it was our 800 freestyle relay,” she said. “That’s definitely the end goal, to get another qualifying time for that relay, or maybe a personal cut.”
Making the NCAA Championships is a big dream for many college athletes, whether they swim for Division I, Division II or Division III. However, Gyorffy also has a fun background, since she wasn’t originally recruited to swim at Pomona. With the swim coaching staff switching up as Gyorffy was headed into college, she didn’t even really talk to them about swimming collegiately. “I originally came here because my oldest sister graduated from Pomona in 2009. […] She played water polo, swam here and had a really great experience,” Gyorffy said.
“I definitely have always valued my academics, but […] I really kind of sealed the deal from the fact that I’d be able to do sports here,” she added. “The fact that I could do sports and still get a really great education – and the fact that [Pomona] was really small – […] was the reason why I decided to come here.”
The Driving Force
MIT Senior Jane He (Image courtesy of MIT Athletics)
MIT senior Jane He didn’t originally plan on going into non-profit work after graduating, but since her experience working with underprivileged high school kids through the Amphibious Achievement program, she has changed her mind about going into engineering after college.
“Coming into MIT I was thinking I would probably go into engineering or some type of pretty science heavy job after I graduated, but after the experience I’ve had in Amphibious Achievement, I’ve realized I want to go into non-profit,” He said. The program combines the best of athletics and academics, much like a Division III college setting. College age mentors like He work on swimming and rowing skills with the high school athletes as well as tutoring them in SAT subjects.
“A lot of these kids come from low-income households or not the best family situations, and a lot of times that distracts them from their studies at school,” He explained. “Our job is to reengage them in their studies, get them excited about school, help them get a healthy mind and body balance and really have fun, build relationships and be mentors.”
He’s introduction to the program began even before her official college career. MIT has a pre-orientation program, which she participated in. “Two of my counselors in there were involved in this program,” she said. “Sounds kind of cool – swimming, tutoring, working with high school students.” He’s original plan was to just help in the coaching aspect for swimming, wary of investing too much time in extracurricular activities as a first semester student-athlete at MIT.
“I was afraid of committing too much,” He admitted. “But then I just really, really liked the people, got really passionate about the mission and decided to be both a coach and a tutor.” Now He is the managing director of the program.
So what is it about the program that she enjoys so much?
“In the coaching portion, we have a really fun team environment,” He explained. “We call oursel[ves] ‘Team Bro-sideon.’” For anyone up on both bro-isms and Ancient Greek mythology, that’s the King of the Bro-cean to you. “The kids just get really fired up about swimming,” He added.
There are two groups of athletes that He – as a swim coach – had exposure to. Though she primarily worked with the intermediate and advanced athletes to perfect strokes, she also recounted a particularly inspirational story about a young man who entered the Amphibious Achievement program without knowing how to swim at all.
“[He] was really afraid to get in the water the first few times,” she said. “Over the course of the semester, […] he became comfortable enough to hop into the deeper pool from the shallower pool where he could not touch the bottom and swim a lap unassisted with everyone cheering wildly for him.” Understandably, He described that as “incredible” that over the course of nine Sundays, a previous non-swimmer could overcome his fear and learn to swim unaided.
As rewarding as the water time is, though, He also said she found the classroom sessions equally rewarding. “You see some of [the students] just really, really don’t like learning at all, and after working with them for a semester, or a couple of semesters and see them grow and realize that ‘Oh, math is actually really kind of cool,’” she said. “Once they see how learning can be really applicable and start to enjoy it, that’s an incredibly rewarding experience.”
One of the ways this love of learning is brought to light is the non-conventional tutoring method that the Amphibious Achievement program employs. Rather than doing endless problems or reading passages and answering questions, “We really focus on engagement,” He said. The focus is on hands-on activities or classroom debates to draw the kids’ focus to the information at hand. “Our job as the tutors,” He explained, “is to engage them in their learning, get them focused there and really get them thinking about how to solve problems.”
With her focus being on helping others “reach their potential,” it seems only natural that He would also have big plans for her swim team this season. As one of a group of captains, He will be instrumental in organizing and running the Alumni meet and organizing the post-meet networking dinner as well as helping to plan this year’s training trip. “Every sports team leader has to make sure everyone is doing and giving their best effort,” He said. And with her multi-faceted approach, He meant in all aspects of competitive life: the pool, the weight room, the class room and interpersonal relationships.
“[I want to] inspire people to have their own goal set, and to work towards achieving those goals, and to be kind of a driving force for the team,” He concluded.
