Welcome to the Dayton women's soccer blog 'The BeaUDiful Game'. Get an inside look at the Dayton women's soccer team through the eyes of the players and coaches. Here is the sixth edition:

For this week's blog I want to give an inside look on what it's like to be a collegiate student-athlete. Freshman Emily Jones agreed to share what an average day for her looks like and the different organizations she's involved with on campus.
 
6:30 a.m. - Wake up and eat breakfast in my room
 
7:00 a.m. - Physical therapy and ankle tape in the athletic training room
 
7:45 a.m. - Cleats on and start kicking the ball around at the Klesse Soccer Complex
 
8 a.m. - Practice starts--as goalkeepers, Kaelyn Johns and I work specifically with Matt Tipton, our goalkeeping coach. Depending on the day, we have different focuses such as distribution with hands or feet, crosses, reaction saves, and ball handling. No matter what we are working on that day, Matt emphasizes doing all the little details right because all the small things lead to the big saves.
 
9:45 a.m. - Quick shower and piece of fruit before class
 
10:10 a.m. - Quantitative chemical analysis lecture
 
11 a.m. - Homework and coffee at Marianist--this is a really good time for me to check emails and make sure I'm up to date in all of my organizations
 
11:50 a.m. - Lunch at the Emporium (yes, this actually happens every weekday)
 
12:10 p.m. - Class--calculus II, honors west and world history, and biology II on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and Spanish conversation and calculus II on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also have quantitative chemical analysis lab on Thursdays, which causes me to miss part of practice and lifting and so I go in to our conditioning coaches on Wednesdays to make up those sessions.
 
3:30 p.m. - Snack and check emails...again
 
4-6 p.m. - Varies day to day--some days I tutor at the Dayton Early College Academy, others I get treatment, go to makeup conditioning, or meet with professors during their office hours.
 
6:30 p.m. - Dinner with teammates
 
7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. -  I dedicate this time to any organization work; this is also the time I have meetings for SGA and PAVE on certain days of the week
 
9:30 p.m.-whenever - Homework!!! :)
 
Q: Is being a collegiate student athlete what you expected? If not what did you not expect?
 
A: All of my club coaches stressed how important time management is as a student-athlete and I felt like, given all the things I was involved with in high school, I had a pretty good grasp of what to expect as a college student-athlete. Honestly, I wasn't caught off guard by much until early second semester when I was figuring out how to balance our much more rigorous training schedule with all the projects going on independently of each other in the different organizations I'm involved with. The university provides lots of resources I was not expecting to have which helped lighten the intensity, but still left the responsibility of delegating my own time up to me.
 
Q: What is your favorite part about being a student athlete?
 
A: The best part about being a student-athlete is having an excuse to show up to class in shorts, a T-shirt, and a ponytail everyday. But for real, I think it's fun to defy a little bit of the stereotype around student-athletes in the way that much of our team does: we are successful science, business, education, and engineering students with widespread involvement from StuGov Sustainability Board to professional fraternities. It seems like everyone knows someone on the women's soccer team because of all the different hats we wear and that network is something unique to student-athletes.
 
Q: I know you're part of PAVE on campus, can you explain what it is and what your role is within it?
 
A: PAVE stands for Peers Advocating for Violence Education. We are a group of students, spanning from first-years to seniors that work to educate and raise awareness of intimate partner violence through a variety of programs we put on throughout the year. We are the "Green Dot people", but run many other campaigns such as Take Back the Night (which is a night for power based personal violence survivors to share their story and stop the silence and stigma of sexual violence), Escalation Workshops, and first-year Red Zone Training. All of us are trained to facilitate each type of workshop and so my role, in general, is to help out at those. Specifically, I am a coordinator with athletics in effort to bring this education to the athletic community, which is a large portion of the 15-20% that reportedly never get Red Zone trained as first-years. This April, my co-coordinator and I organized UD's first ever Yards for Yeardley campaign which was started by the One Love Foundation to raise awareness of sexual violence on college campuses and specifically on sports teams by challenging a team to dedicate 1,000,000 yards in 30 days to honor Yeardley Love, a late student athlete from UVA and sexual violence/murder victim. We invited all varsity and club teams to participate and currently have over 2,000,000 yards in two weeks with over 250 participants across 12 different teams.
 
Q: How has being a student athlete throughout your life shaped who you are today? 
 
A: Besides the INTENSE time management skills I have acquired, being a student-athlete keeps me competitive on and off the field. I've never been the most talented player on my team and that has taught me to really look up to my teammates for what I should be doing to meet their level of play. Constantly being surrounded by other young women, who are striving and pushing themselves to their limits with intent of providing their best performance for our team, and not for personal gain, is so empowering. My teammates have always encouraged me to excel in the classroom by putting myself in uncomfortable and new situations, which translates to the field when I need to overcome a barrier that I've never had to deal with before. That whole network and system of "being your best self" day in and day out as a student and an athlete has definitely impacted my character for the better.