Editor’s Note: This article and the above spread appears in the Spring 2026 edition of . See below for a web-friendly version.

David Omasombo ’26 and Chiwer Mayen ’26 have shared many basketball courts across their young lifetimes, including historic Alumni Gym, but the first one stands out in their memories for being the worst, in a technical sense. The surface was uneven, the rims inconsistent, and, most of the time, there were no nets.

“Terrible,” says Mayen. But at Lewiston’s Hillview apartment complex, it was a gathering place for the community, which made it a great place to be introduced to each other and develop a passion for hoops.

“Thirty kids on one court, 30 kids on the other court,” says Mayen, a sociology major.

“Just pack it and play basketball,” adds Omasombo, also a sociology major.

Omasombo would have been around 11 years old and Mayen 12 when their worlds first collided at the Hillview apartments, and both had already been on long journeys just to get to those basketball courts.

Omasombo was born to Congolese parents in a refugee camp in Tanzania. He arrived in the United States in 2010 via Indianapolis, as part of a church asylum program, and then lived in Nashville. Both American cities were tough on the young Omasombo.

“Back home, America is often described as the ‘promised land,’ like in the Bible,” Omasombo says. “But I didn’t know any English and I experienced a lot of bullying. It was hard to make friends as the little African kid in the group who dressed differently and spoke Swahili.” Omasombo spent long hours in Nashville working with his second-grade teacher Tee Hassold, learning English in one-on-one sessions after school.

Mayen was born in Jackson, Mississippi, to parents who had come to America from South Sudan. He lived in a house in Jackson built by Habitat for Humanity until he was in third grade. It was, he remembers, a great home, but not a great area. “The house had bars on the windows, and I mostly stayed inside,” Mayen says. “At the time I didn’t realize why, but it was for my own safety.” That’s when his father, who raised him and his sister mostly alone, moved the family to North Carolina. They stayed with family friends for about a year. Then Mayen’s father heard about opportunities in Lewiston, where there was a growing South Sudanese community. His family drove north to Maine and eventually moved into the Hillview complex.

In Nashville, Omasombo’s father had also heard about the growing community of African refugees in Maine and felt Lewiston would be a better fit for his family. That kind second grade teacher, Tee Hassold, helped Omasombo’s family raise funds to move north. “All 10 of us drove to Maine in 2012 in a 16-passenger van with all of our belongings,” Omasombo says. “Thanks to my teacher and the generosity of the community, we were able to move to Lewiston. I still keep in touch with Mr. Hassold. He is such an amazing human being.”

He was 10 when he arrived in Lewiston. After his first year at Longley Elementary, the Omasombo family moved to the Hillview apartments, and he enrolled at McMahon Elementary. That’s when the two boys met on the basketball court. The memory is fuzzy but Omasombo is pretty sure about one thing.

“I think my first impression of Chiwer was that he was a giant,” says Omasombo.

Mayen’s parents’ South Sudanese heritage is in the Dinka tribe, some of the tallest people in the world, and he is no exception. Today he is the tallest player on the Bobcats, standing at 6 feet 9 inches. Omasombo is the shortest player on the team, a full foot shorter than Mayen. But Omasombo had an edge in terms of basketball experience when they met. Growing up in the refugee camp in Tanzania, Omasombo only knew soccer and laughs about how when he first encountered basketball in America he tried to kick the ball through the hoop. Mayen was even newer to basketball. He hadn’t really liked sports growing up, but basketball started to grow on him.

“I was so bad at first,” Mayen says. “All I could do was pass the ball. In basketball, height is height, but you really need to have other attributes as well, such as strength. But I love the journey of getting better every day.”

The duo didn’t share the court in an organized setting until they attended Lewiston High School and started playing on the junior varsity team.

They both made varsity the next year and, under the leadership of then head coach Ronnie Turner, helped lead Lewiston boys basketball to one of their best seasons in recent memory. “I was tough on them, but Chiwer was great about taking my coaching to heart, and David would text me to open the gym for extra shots at night after games, and then again in the early morning,” says Turner. “He would be working on his game at 5 a.m.”

“Ronnie was the perfect role model that we needed to hear from,” Omasombo says. “He had grown up in Lewiston and knew what we were going through.”

Turner, whose mother, Tonya Bailey, is the director of �ֲ���ý’ Student Center for Belonging and Community, also had a sense, a belief, about where this hardworking pair with so much behind them might go next. Men’s basketball head coach Jon Furbush ’05 hired Turner as an assistant coach in 2021, and Turner made sure to alert him to the duo. “I had never had any players from Lewiston High School so I am grateful to Ronnie for helping me get in front of those guys,” Furbush says. “I remember watching both of them play and thinking to myself, ‘Maybe we have something here.’”

Mayen played one post-grad season at The Woodstock Academy in Connecticut, so he and Omasombo both enrolled at �ֲ���ý in fall 2022. They are the first Lewiston High School alumni to play men’s basketball at �ֲ���ý in five decades, since Bruce Campbell ’76.

Not that �ֲ���ý was a completely new environment for either of them when they arrived, as Omasombo and Mayen often snuck into Alumni Gym as kids to get shots up. They’d play pick-up with �ֲ���ý students. “Alumni Gym is where I threw down my first real dunk,” Mayen says. But when they first met, the notion of �ֲ���ý as a future alma mater was far from their minds.

Now, Omasombo and Mayen are recent �ֲ���ý grads, after making the most (and then some) of their time on campus. After four years steeped in academics, basketball, internships, community service, jobs, and further friendship, Omasombo and Mayen are well-aware of the example they set for future generations. Mayen was raised by an immigrant father, trying to care for his son and daughter on his own. Omasombo spent the first eight years of his life in the refugee camp before moving to America. “I didn’t have the privilege or opportunity to go to school and there were very few resources,” Omasombo says. “All we had was family. But that kept us alive.”

What might not seem possible is possible. It’s been done. Here they are.

And yet, when you look at what both of them do in the Lewiston community on top of their athletic and academic pursuits at �ֲ���ý, it definitely seems impossible for anyone to achieve as much as they do. There just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day.

“They redefine the meaning of hard work,” Furbush says. “Some people think they’re working hard, but if they actually spent some time with either of those guys they would quickly realize, ‘Oh, I am not maximizing my day.’”

For starters, both serve as substitute teachers in the Lewiston Public Schools.

“I’ve really enjoyed my time with the students and seeing my old teachers,” Mayen says. “I try to put myself in the kids’ shoes and try to have an impact on their psyche in a positive way.”

Mayen enjoys working with elementary school kids, while Omasombo has worked more with the middle and high schoolers. It’s not always easy, given the challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic, particularly behavioral issues. “I think it helps that the teachers can point to us as examples of people from the Lewiston Public Schools who are doing well. You don’t have to misbehave or fall into the wrong crowd,” Omasombo says.

Omasombo remembers what it felt like when he was in high school.

Violence in the community was a problem. So when he was a senior at LHS, Omasombo and a friend of his started an after-school club where young men could discuss issues impacting their lives and how to address them.

“Our goal was not to fix everything. We just wanted to give the boys in our community something we didn’t have growing up,” Omasombo says. “We talked about leadership and not following the crowd. Most importantly, we focused on staying away from potentially dangerous situations that could alter people’s lives forever.”

In addition to working in the heart of the city, Omasombo is an organic farmer. His dad, whose first name is Omasombo, grew up farming with his father in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The elder Omasombo was able to secure a parcel of land in Lisbon designated for refugees and started OK Community Farm. “My dad is an inspiration, getting up at 4 a.m. every day to work on the farm and support our family,”Omasombo says. “We sell our vegetables down by Kennedy Park. I really look forward to the days that I can go to the farm and help out, working side-by-side with my dad.” Omasombo is entrepreneurial, giving haircuts and starting a pressure-washing business with his girlfriend. Since eighth grade, when he traveled to Texas with his church group to help with hurricane relief, he’s been deeply vested in community service.

Being there for others makes him feel closer to God. He jumps at every opportunity to pay forward the assistance he’s gotten through the years. “I know what it feels like to need help, and not know how to ask,” Omasombo says. “I know what it feels like to feel lost and alone, especially as a kid. I had people step into my life when they didn’t have to, so I feel the responsibility to be that for someone else.”

Mayen is a direct support professional, providing caregiving services to people with disabilities, working in a group home in Augusta. There is also a national shortage in this field, so it’s a job that provides Mayen with a lot of opportunities. As a junior at �ֲ���ý, he worked overnights, sometimes going directly from basketball games to the group home. He isn’t doing that anymore, but still works long hours.

He doesn’t mind. “Working as a direct support professional can be hard but it is amazing, eye-opening work,” Mayen says. “I love the individuals I work with. One client I work with is a huge fan of Walker, Texas Ranger, so we watch that a lot together.” Mayen also connected with the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at �ֲ���ý, where the mission is “to weave together campus and community for the enrichment of both student learning and public life.”

Through Harward’s community work-study program, which gives students who receive Federal Work-Study funds the chance to work off-campus and engage with the community, Mayen secured an internship with The Third Place, a network that connects Maine’s Black professionals, students, and entrepreneurs to both professional and social opportunities. Mayen collects data on Black professionals in Maine and helps plan various events. It’s a job that allows him to work remotely, critical when one is as busy as Mayen is every day at �ֲ���ý and beyond. “My schedule is very hectic, so it was great to find such a flexible internship through them,” Mayen says.

“David and Chiwer are prime examples of what Lewiston is capable of,” says Mohamed Awil, associate director of volunteer programs and community partnerships at the Harward Center and leader of the community work-study program. Like Omasombo and Mayen, he is a Lewiston High School alumnus, having graduated in 2014. He coached track and cross country at LHS while Mayen and Omasombo were there as students. “I hope they inspire people to stay in the community,” Awil says. “Or come back to help uplift us all. I am excited to see the �ֲ���ý and Lewiston connection continue to grow.”

Mayen is driven by the desire to help his dad and his sister. “My father raised us as a single dad, and I want to give him all the props in the world,” Mayen says. “I work so much because I want to provide for him back in South Sudan, and also my sister, who is figuring things out as a young adult in Mobile, Alabama.”

Their coach, Furbush, is in awe of Mayen and Omasombo’s values.

“Chiwer and David are maybe the most unselfish people I’ve ever met, not just at �ֲ���ý, but in my life. They rarely put themselves first. They’re always thinking, ‘How can we give back?’”

After graduation, Omasombo’s plan is to go into commercial real estate, while Mayen’s goal is to continue playing basketball after college. He’s never been to South Sudan and would like to go in the near future and meet members of his extended family. Likewise, Omasombo hopes to one day be able to go to the Congo for the first time. But for now they are making it in America, despite facing obstacles along the way that most people can’t imagine.

“This country provides a lot of opportunities,” Mayen says. “America is great at times, and it’s terrible at times. But the goal is always upward mobility. Struggle and perseverance is a great teacher. You need to go through difficult times to succeed in this world.”

Johnny Walker ’24 always wanted to play tackle football. 

Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., he was a very good flag football player as a pre-teen, and he loved watching the NFL on television, rooting on his favorite team, the New York Giants. 

There was just one problem. Even by the time he entered ninth grade at Poly Prep Country Day, in Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights neighborhood, Walker weighed just 99 pounds. 

“I really wanted to play, but my mom never wanted me to,” Walker said. “She was just looking out for my safety, but it was a bit of a source of tension growing up.”

Before high school, Walker’s parents, Will Walker and Amy Walsh, had offered Johnny a deal: He could play tackle football in eighth grade, as long as he found a different sport to play in high school. 

So at Poly Prep, Walker took up wrestling to go along with his spring sport, baseball, which he’d played his whole life. Wrestling turned out to be a great fit for a kid his parents describe as “relentless.”

“Amy, in particular, convinced him that wrestling would be a great sport to do because it’s all weight-based, so he’s wrestling his own weight class,” Will Walker said. “He could battle as hard as he wanted to, but the kids would be the same size.” 

Walker’s parents don’t remember him raising the topic of playing tackle football again throughout high school, but for Johnny it was always on his mind. 

By senior year, Walker weighed a whopping 135 pounds, not exactly the weight you need to survive on the gridiron, especially in a competitive program like Poly Prep’s, which regularly sends players to top NCAA football programs.

He graduated high school in 2019 and took a gap year, during which the soon-to-be politics major gained valuable experience working on Capitol Hill and on the Elizabeth Warren presidential campaign. 

Walker also gained something else that would help him in his future plans: weight. 

“Ben said, ‘Dude, just come out and play football,’ and that was the seed of the idea.” 

~ Johnny Walker ’24, walk-on �ֲ���ý football player

Now weighing in at 155 pounds, Walker matriculated to �ֲ���ý in fall 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. No varsity games in any sport were played that fall, and only a handful the rest of the year.

“Initially, I was planning on playing for the club rugby team,” Walker said. But during Orientation, he got talking to a classmate who was a football player, Ben Conrad of Ivoryton, Conn. “I said that I actually didn’t know anything about rugby, I knew way more about football.” 

“So Ben said, ‘Dude, just come out and play football,’ and that was the seed of the idea.” 

Walker started showing up to the team’s informal practices — no coaches, just small groups of football players, in masks, making the most of a season without games. 

Walker figured he would make a good wide receiver. He’d always been athletic; now he had the height (6 feet), and his weight was getting to the point where he was confident he’d be able to take a hit.

“The guys were incredibly welcoming about me potentially joining the team, which was a little surprising,” Walker said. “I didn’t know what to expect. But they were like, ‘Oh yeah, absolutely.’” Classmates like Jarrin Sato of Honolulu and Anthony Morton Jr. of Philadelphia were “super supportive, super helpful.” 

Walker keeps a video clip of one of those COVID-era workouts on his phone. “I gave one of the guys a double move and just cooked him,” Walker said. “And that one video kept me going for weeks, even though I wasn’t hearing back from coaches. I was like, ‘Ah, I can do it. I can do it!’” 

By spring 2021, the dense fog of COVID was lifting, and �ֲ���ý athletics teams could start practicing and playing again — with coaches. Walker soon realized that even though he had been working out with the players every day, he wasn’t actually on the team yet, nor did the coaches have any idea who he was. 

So a classmate, Liam Foley, a quarterback from Foxborough, Mass., introduced Walker to one of the �ֲ���ý assistant coaches, who told Walker that he knew the football coach at Poly Prep — which only meant that he knew the coach, not Walker’s coach, since Walker hadn’t actually played in high school. 

The �ֲ���ý coach told him to show up a 6:45 the next morning. “I’m there,” Walker replied. The coach sensed Walker’s nervousness, and reassured him, saying, “This offense should be very similar to what you ran in high school.” Walker just looked at him, shrugged, and said, “Sounds good.”

Walker figures that he “passed the eye test,” meaning a coach’s quick visual evaluation of ability. “The next day we ran some routes, and I got a jersey number and soon enough my name was on the website.”

His parents spun toward Johnny. “They just turned around and said, ‘What!?’” 

According to the NCAA, just over 7 percent of high school football players will play college football. We could find nothing about how many athletes play college ball without playing in high school, but we assume Walker is one of a tiny group. 

So by spring 2021, Walker had a �ֲ���ý jersey and a name on a website — but he hadn’t yet told his parents.

“I went home for Mother’s Day, and I’m sitting with my grandma, my aunt, my mom and the rest of my family,” Walker recalled. “My aunt unknowingly teed up the surprise by asking me, ‘Are you playing any sports?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, well, actually, I’m playing football.’” 

His parents spun toward Johnny. “They just turned around and said, ‘What!?’” 

By that time, Walker had increased his weight to around 175 pounds. He was physically a different person from his high school days, and his parents had a different reaction to their younger son playing tackle football: They were proud that he was able to achieve his dream of playing the sport in college.

“I thought it was super cool,” said Amy Walsh. “His perseverance to work his way onto the team was impressive, and now that he was bigger, he wasn’t going to get crushed every play.”

As a sophomore in 2021, Walker started out as a wide receiver, but the coaching staff decided to move him to defensive back. With that video clip still on his phone, the switch bothered him at first. “I really wanted to be a receiver, and I was struggling in practice at safety,” Walker said. “But one day they tried me at cornerback, and that went much better.”

Walker’s mentor and supporter in his move to the defensive side was Owen Straley ’23, a standout defensive back for the Bobcats who is now a graduate assistant at Springfield College. “We told the coaches that Johnny was the real deal and that we needed him on the team,” said Straley.

Initially, Walker was on the “scout team,” which comprises players who line up opposite the starters in practice to mimic that week’s opponent. Players on the scout team don’t often play in games, but Straley talked with Walker about his own experience on the scout team back as a younger player.

Straley emphasized opportunity: Doing well on the scout team will get the coaches to take notice quickly. Walker was more than ready to get people’s attention. “I think what separates Johnny and what makes him a really good player is that he’s fearless,” Straley said. “The NESCAC can be sort of tiered, some teams get more ‘respect’ from opponents than others, but Johnny is ready to challenge anyone.”

In a twist of fate, Walker’s first playing time as a Bobcat came in a memorable road win at Bowdoin in 2021. The �ֲ���ý defensive coordinator at the time would briefly take players out of the game when they made a mistake. Straley missed a tackle, and Walker was sent into the game to replace him.

Naturally, Bowdoin noticed the newbie — especially since he was still wearing No. 85, a wide receiver number — and immediately tried to burn him. Walker and Straley both laugh at the memory.

“Coach told me I was going back in the next play, and I said, ‘That may be one play too late, coach,’” Straley recalled. “Sure enough, they attacked Johnny with their best receiver. But honestly, that was a learning moment because that was the first time he had ever really gotten beat in a game. That’s going to happen, every game you play, that’s the reality of being a corner. It’s the toughest position mentally in football.” 

�ֲ���ý went on to beat Bowdoin, so all turned out OK. “The coach did say we had to get me out of that jersey number,” recalled Walker.

Last season, with a new coaching staff in place, Walker was wearing No. 29, and making plays as the “boundary” cornerback, who lines up on the side of the field with less space between the sideline and the line of scrimmage. He recorded his first career interception against Tufts in front of the home crowd at Garcelon Field. 

“It was third and long,” Walker recalled. “I actually got beat on the play, so I was going in for the tackle and the ball bounced through the receiver’s hands. Without even looking, as I rolled over making the tackle, I realized the ball’s in my arm, and I jumped up and started running to show everyone.” 

His parents back home in Brooklyn were watching the web video feed and showed everyone as well. 

“We were all screaming and yelling for him,” Walsh said. “It’s really nice that �ֲ���ý has the video streaming of the games. Because the Tufts game we were watching where he got the interception, we were able to film it with our phones, and then text the clip to all our friends, and that was great.” 

Straley and Walker played alongside each other last year, a season that saw �ֲ���ý defeat Amherst for the first time since 1999. On the final play of the game, as Amherst went into a lateral frenzy, Walker forced two fumbles, helping preserve the victory for the Bobcats. “I got blessed by the statistician,” Walker said.

In this clip, Johnny Walker ’24 (No. 29) forces not one but two fumbles on the final play of last year’s victory over Amherst:

Now a senior, Walker has once again switched jersey numbers. He is No. 21, in honor of Straley, who wore the number for most of his �ֲ���ý career. “Straley’s just a great football mind,” Walker said. “I always text him and pick his brain. He was like a coach last year to me, honestly.” 

Walker forced and recovered a fumble during the season opener against Wesleyan. He missed the Tufts game with an injury but is expected to return to the field this week against Colby.

And yes, the �ֲ���ý coaching staff, both past and present, eventually learned he hadn’t played since eighth grade. “It’s not something I bring up much with them,” Walker said with a laugh. “I’m just trying to blend in. But yeah, they know.” 

Cole De Magistris was frustrated. 

It was two falls ago, and De Magistris, then a sophomore, had returned to campus determined to land a summer internship in professional sports. But the world seemed to have other plans.

“I was applying to everything NFL related, anything college football related. And then I branched out to different sports, like hockey and baseball,” De Magistris recalls. “Anything, just to get into the sports industry, get my foot in the door, and I heard nothing back.” 

Anyone who has tried to break into the competitive (yet shockingly low-paying) business of professional sports can relate. There aren’t too many universal experiences in life, but this is one of them: Death, taxes, and rejection emails.

“It was always these automated emails that were like, ‘I’m sorry, but we selected a different person,’ or ‘We went a different way, but thank you for applying. We hope you apply next time,’” De Magistris says. “So I thought, ‘Oh, dang, that kind of stinks.’” 

Hailing from Emerson, N.J., De Magistris finally connected locally with the Rutgers University football program. It was only for a few days during summer 2022, but he gained valuable experience.

“The main thing I did was help work recruiting camps,” DeMagistris recalls. “So kids from all over New Jersey and beyond would come through the camp, and I helped run drills, whether it be broad jump or the 40-yard dash.” 

Having peeked behind the scenes of a football program in the “Power Five” — the five major U.S. college athletic conferences — DeMagistris freshened up his resume and redoubled his efforts to land an internship with an NFL team for summer 2023. 

“I applied to every single NFL internship that I could find.” His persistence paid off: Two teams, including the Minnesota Vikings, responded. “They had me answer some open-ended questions, and I was able to secure a phone interview.”

The charismatic DeMagistris “crushed the phone interview”, and was offered the position.

He was now a “training camp fan engagement intern,” which meant that De Magistris gained admission to one part of the vast world of professional sports marketing. Working at the Vikings’ training camp (“Fan Village”) in Eagan, Minn., he and his fellow interns worked to ensure that the multigenerational crowds that came to watch the players had the best experience possible. 

Today, an NFL training camp is more than just practices for the team. It’s a fan event, with more than 1 million fans attending one of the 32 NFL teams’ training camps each year.

“One of the first Saturdays, we had a record-breaking 4,300 people in attendance,” De Magistris says. “We have a kids zone where we set up cornhole and all these inflatable games. We have giant Jenga. We have all these different fun activities for parents to bond with their kids and play.” 

It’s not just fun and games: De Magistris and his fellow interns are creating the next generation of Vikings fans that will help support a . And the job was a perfect match for De Magistris, an offensive tackle, two-time team captain, and the 2023 �ֲ���ý nominee for the prestigious William V. Campbell Trophy, which honors academics, community service, and on-field performance.

Though the summer gig was paid, it would have been much harder to accept without the support of the �ֲ���ý Center for Purposeful Work, says De Magistris.

“It’s an expensive internship. It’s only a month, and the plane tickets, the meals, the food, the transportation, it all adds up quickly. Purposeful Work was able to help fund this internship for me, which was excellent.” 

The center provided another layer of support to make sure that De Magistris, one of more than 100 Purposeful Work interns, could get the most out of his summer experience. 

During the summer, Purposeful Work interns have regular check-ins with Beverly Vari, associate director for employer engagement and internships at �ֲ���ý. “We have cohorts, and I meet with other interns involved with Purposeful Work who are doing different jobs,” De Magistris says. 

“So within my cohort, I have someone who’s involved with music. I have someone who’s involved with STEM. I have someone who’s involved with a government job. And then it’s me who’s involved with sports. We all get to talk on Zoom biweekly and hear each other’s experiences, learn from it, and then apply it to ours.” 

With Vari’s support, De Magistris and his fellow interns prepare reports about their internship experiences. His report will help guide the next round of Purposeful Work interns who want to work in professional sports. His main advice? “Don’t give up, and use all available resources.” 

Now back on campus and engaged in his own training camp, De Magistris is busy with his studies (he’s a double major in economics and in rhetoric, film and screen studies) and preparing to help anchor the �ֲ���ý offensive line.

“We have 39 first-years coming in so we’re going to be a very young team. I’m excited to take these young guns under my wing here with my fellow teammates and show them the ropes and have a fun time.” 

He’s also eager to mentor anyone else who is interested in working in sports.

“I’m very thankful for my experience at �ֲ���ý College,” De Magistris says. “I feel like I’ve made the right decisions up until now, and if anyone has questions for me, I’m here to answer them. And I would love to talk to them about it because I’m passionate about being in the sports industry and working in the NFL, and if someone else is too, I’m all for helping them.” 

Unity and pride has been the theme for the �ֲ���ý women’s rowing program under long-time head coach Peter Steenstra.

In the ultimate team sport, the Bobcats have displayed their unity and pride on the biggest stage, winning five national titles since 2015 at the NCAA Championship. Going into last month’s national regatta, �ֲ���ý’ second varsity eight boat had won eight straight gold medals.

“This program is unique in our mindset, and in who we are,” says Ollie Young ’23 of Burlington, Vt., the second varsity eight three seat. “Being proud of who we are is something our class had to learn, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the last four years.”

The unity the program displays is more than just maintaining a consistent stroke rate. All year, the rowers wore patches on their uniforms displaying the Progress Pride Flag, which celebrates the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and calls for a more inclusive society, a meaningful expression of support within the team, including for Young, who is a trans male athlete.

Supporting one’s teammate is engrained in the program. Young’s fellow senior in the 2V boat, coxswain Isabella Sobolewski of Washington, D.C., was feeling down after the boat’s disappointing first race at nationals, putting their gold medal streak in jeopardy. So he stepped up.

“I had a little bit of a moment where I was really disappointed and really crushed,” Sobolewski said. “He looked at me and said, ‘Listen, you have got this, we have got this, it’s you and me, it’s been four years, it’s going to be okay.'”

It was more than okay, as the second varsity eight rallied to maintain their gold-medal streak, and the Bobcats finished fourth as a team on the biggest stage of women’s rowing. And they did it, like they always have, with pride.

Last Saturday’s NCAA East Regional Championship on the campus of Bowdoin College did not go as planned for �ֲ���ý men’s cross country captain Ryan Smith ’23 of Westport, Conn.

Reason being: He lost one of his shoes within the first mile of the 8K race.

“My shoe was loose because someone stepped on it, so I looked behind me and saw like 100 runners in pursuit,” Smith said. “I couldn’t afford to slow down to fix it. I kicked the shoe into the woods and kept going.”

Remarkably, Smith finished 11th out of more than 200 runners, pacing the Bobcats to a second-place showing overall. The next day, the Bobcats learned they’d qualified for the NCAA Championships for the 11th time in program history.

The women’s team survived their race without any shoe-related incidents. But captain Jill Richardson ’23 of Auburn, Maine, had a challenge of her own.

The Bobcats always try to run as a pack, but Richardson is, as her teammate Frieda Kickliter ’23 of Mobile, Ala., says, “different.”

Different in that she’s just faster than everyone else — not just on the team, but in the region. Richardson, an All-American in 2021, won Saturday’s race by more than 40 seconds, becoming the first �ֲ���ý women’s cross country runner to win the regional championship in 30 years.

So the challenge for Richardson was simple. How do you pace yourself when you are so dominant there’s no one else near you?

“My brother was there, and he called out to me to use the lead bicycle,” Richardson said, referring to the bike that leads the race, letting spectators and others know that the runners are approaching. “I thought that seems like a good idea, so I used the bike to pace myself and it worked!”

The women also placed second overall as a team, qualifying for the NCAA Championships for the eighth time in program history.

The women and men are now at Michigan State University, preparing for Saturday’s (Nov. 19) national meet, but for Smith, it’s going to be tough to top the regional.

“I would say it’s the most special moment of my cross country career,” Smith said. “Not because my shoe fell off and I still did well, but because we as a team achieved so much, together. There were a lot of tears of joy after we crossed that finish line.”

’23 fielded a lot of questions during her summer job as the Major League Baseball scouting liaison for the Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod League. 

Who is available to pitch out of the bullpen today? Why is someone in a slump? How is a player adjusting to using a wood bat for the first time?

The questions from scouts cover a lot of topics, and Taylor’s favorite is one that might need an explanation for the non-baseball fan, but makes sense for those familiar with the lingo.

“So, is this player a ‘dude’?” 

Translation: “Does this player have the je ne sais quoi, the poise, the talent  — all of it — to be a star?”

While there are countless summer collegiate baseball leagues, the Cape Cod League is widely considered the best. It’s where the elite college baseball players from around the country congregate to show MLB front offices what they can do. 

And as Major League Baseball scouts descend on the Cape each summer, they want answers that will help their clubs make multi-million dollar decisions in the amateur draft every year.

As a scouting liaison, Taylor makes sure the scouts who attend games get the information they need to correctly evaluate the talent they see on the field. She is able to provide insights to the scouts beyond just the raw numbers because she spends the majority of each game in the Y-D Red Sox dugout. 

“In the dugout, you get that feel for who the players are as people, how they are as teammates,” Taylor said. “The more I’m able to be there and talk to the players directly, the more complete answers I can give to the questions scouts ask me.” 

The players competing on the Cape are not the only ones with MLB dreams. Taylor wants to get there as well. And to do that, she has to do a little bit of everything.

A psychology major who is a utility player for the �ֲ���ý softball team, Taylor hails from Fair Lawn, N.J. She comes from a family of Yankee fans, having grown up less than 20 miles from Yankee Stadium. 

“I peaked in 2009,” she jokes. (2009 was the last time the Yankees won the World Series… but they’ve won 27 overall, which is 16 more than any other team, so reader sympathy may be limited.)

Taylor attended countless Yankee games growing up, often with her grandfather.

“​​I was the kid that would keep score at Yankee games,” Taylor said. “My grandpa would sit with me, and we’d get a hot dog and keep our scorebooks on our laps.” 

Her grandfather would tell her stories about Yankees from days gone by, advising her to hit like Mickey Mantle and catch like Yogi Berra. 

Having played a lot of catcher growing up and as a student of baseball history, Taylor’s favorite player was not any current Yankee, but the late, great Thurman Munson, who played in the Cape Cod League while attending Kent State University in the late 1960s. 

Loving baseball was one thing, but actually working in professional baseball didn’t really cross Taylor’s mind until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. 

“It was the first time ever that I didn’t have sports in my life,” Taylor said. “I really missed it. I can only watch marbles on ESPN Ocho for so long,” she joked. 

Taylor discovered a whole world of opportunities for her to explore in sports. 

“Taking into account what I study at �ֲ���ý, and what I like to do, and how I want to live my life, I started to really look into it and became really invested in it,” Taylor said. “I came to realize this is what I want my future to look like.” 

This is Taylor’s second internship with a summer baseball league. Such gigs are typically unpaid, which is where �ֲ���ý stepped up, awarding Taylor a Purposeful Work internship. Last summer was spent with the Newport Gulls of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a much more operations-based internship that included running on-field promotions.

For her second internship, Taylor wanted to get between the lines, and she wanted it at the top rung of the collegiate summer league ladder. “I applied to pretty much every Cape League team because I wanted to come to the Cape, come hell or high water,” Taylor said.

“I was with the No. 2 league last summer, and the only place to go is up. I wanted to be in the number one league in the country.” 

Now she’s there and her work was noticed by the Y-D front office and coaches. 

“From the get-go, the conversations that Amanda and I have had have revolved around networking, if she can, with the scouts,” General Manager Chip Russo said. “Make some contacts, and be able to parlay that into a potential career opportunity. She’s also working very closely with the coaching staff and they like her quite a bit.”

Craig Gianinno has been coaching baseball for 23 years. He is the director of player development for the University of San Francisco and one of the assistant coaches for the Y-D Red Sox. Gianinno arrives at the park earlier than anyone else, and thus, he and Taylor have developed a terrific rapport. He sees the work she puts in for the team.

“Amanda is a leader. She’s proactive. She takes initiative. She’s always looking to serve other people. She is as good as it gets from an organizational point of view,” Gianinno said. “She really cares about her craft and what her role and responsibility is here. The players have a lot of respect for her, and she is very consistent in everything she does to make us better, every single day.” 

To say her responsibilities with the Y-D Red Sox vary widely would be an understatement. Sometimes she’s hunched over a laptop, printing stat sheets. Other times she’s on the field, working with the players in the batting cage or spelling a coach who is throwing batting practice. 

There’s an art to throwing BP, something Taylor is still learning.

“One guy complained, ‘That was bad,’ and I asked, ‘Why was it bad?’” Taylor said. “‘He goes, ‘You were throwing too hard.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’” 

“She’s pretty fearless, man,” Gianinno siad. “She gets out there and you’re talking about the best players in the world in amateur baseball. And she’s out there throwing BP to them. I have a ton of respect for her because she’s got a lot of courage. That’s not an easy thing to do. And when we throw BP, we make it look easy, but it’s really not. She gets out there and she does it.” 

When Y-D is on the road, Taylor’s work doesn’t stop. Her “side hustle” is traveling to different games in the Cape and serving as the official scorekeeper, a natural fit for Taylor since she grew up keeping score at Yankee games.

When it comes to working in baseball, the elephant in the room remains the fact that the industry is mostly composed of men. But Taylor does not have to be a trailblazer because there are a number of women who have already done it. One of those women is Bianca Smith, the first Black woman to serve as a professional baseball coach.

Smith works for the Florida Complex League Red Sox, a team owned by the big league club and composed mainly of players just getting started in pro baseball. 

“It’s really cool to have those people to look up to, and Bianca’s path is just so unique,” Taylor said. “She’s a lawyer who’s an assistant coach for a professional baseball organization. She’s wicked smart and just so good at what she does. It’s nice to have someone that I can lean on and catch up with.” 

Smith’s primary advice to Taylor has been to continue to assert herself, which is not a problem for Taylor.

“If anyone can assert themselves, it’s me,” Taylor said. “That’s the New Jersey in me.” 

It’s 90 minutes before first pitch, and the interns are bantering in the press box of Red Wilson Field, a high school field that also happens to host the Y-D Red Sox each summer. 

“What don’t you do, Amanda?” asks the team’s video production manager. 

Per usual, the wireless Internet isn’t working. And Taylor, the only person on staff who knows how to operate the printer, has been busy printing rosters and statistics and doing other administrative work, which can, at times, seem like half her day. 

It’s all part of the strange dichotomy of the Cape, so close to the top level of baseball, yet so far. 

Players who will be worth millions in a year or two travel to games on school buses and play on high school fields, some of which don’t have lights. Interns, who attend some of the top colleges in the country, deal with faulty WiFi and whatever else may come up over the course of a day. 

Taylor is chatting with some of the interns about her experience throwing batting practice. 

“What don’t you do, Amanda?” asks the team’s video production manager, a local to the area. 

Taylor laughs and jokes that she’s the hyphen in Y-D. 

But it’s true. She makes everything connect. Well, except the Internet. Someone else is checking on that.

In fall 2020, Emily Gianunzio of Darien, Conn., was about to start her senior year at �ֲ���ý and her final year of Bobcat field hockey.

Then came the pandemic, which shut down NESCAC athletics. So Emily Gianunzio did what others have done in the conference, deciding to take a year off from school in order to return in this fall and play for the Bobcats. 

At the time, she was already renting a house with friends from �ֲ���ý, so she stayed in town. There was just one thing she needed: a job.

Luckily, Saint Dominic Academy in Auburn needed an assistant coach for its season and �ֲ���ý head coach Dani Kogut connected Emily with the Saints.

One Saints player was especially eager to have Gianunzio come aboard: senior captain Anna Cote of Auburn, whose older sister Paige was already a Bobcat.

“I knew (Emily) was such a talented player and would bring such a good skill set to the team,” said Cote, who had her own sights set on attending �ֲ���ý, like her sister. “I was really excited for her to come coach.”

Gianunzio and the Saints learned a lot from each other.

“It was really nice to have Emily there as an extra explainer,” Saints head coach Abi Bowie said. “It was great to have a younger person there with me that the girls can connect with and also talk about college because she’s in it.”

Gianunzio learned that coaches go through a lot more than what you see on the field each day.

“Having to navigate team culture stuff, not being a player, I recognize is harder, because I had the experience of dealing with that last year,” Gianunzio said. “I really gained an appreciation for what coaches do behind the scenes.”

This fall, Cote enrolled at �ֲ���ý with the Class of 2025, and Gianunzio returned to �ֲ���ý for her senior year, going from Cote’s coach to her teammate.

“When she was my coach, I was looking up to her so much, helping to make our team a lot better and grow,” Cote said. “And this year it was about playing together and putting our minds together to make plays out there on the field.”

They made plenty of plays, with Gianunzio finishing second on the team in points and Cote being voted the program’s MVP among the first-years and sophomores by her teammates.

Gianunzio’s senior thesis in psychology focuses on the correlation between athletic performance and the ability to pay attention. She is considering going into coaching after she graduates this spring, and her current coach is all for it.

“I think that’s a really great field for her, it gets her to pair two passions of hers, both athletics and psychology,” Kogut said. “Whether she’s coaching or not she’ll definitely use that.”

Last Saturday’s football game under the lights at Bowdoin may have ended with joy in �ֲ���ýville. But halfway through the game, the home team owned a 10–0 lead, holding �ֲ���ý to just three first downs and 23 yards of offense.

“We weren’t playing the way we expected to play in the first half,” said senior quarterback Brendan Costa of Westport, Mass. “We talked about it at halftime. We came out with a different type of intensity.”

And how. 

A couple minutes into the second half, Costa flashed the talent that’s been re-writing the �ֲ���ý record books this year, immediately sparking the Bobcat offense with a 57-yard touchdown strike to Christian Olivieri ’22 of Hull, Mass.

With four seconds left in the game, the good news was that �ֲ���ý held a 25–24 lead. The bad news was that Bowdoin had the ball deep in Bobcat territory.

But on fourth down, Bowdoin’s 28-yard field goal attempt sailed wide left, giving the Bobcats a victory in the 123rd meeting between the two rivals.

“I decided I love my team, I love this program, and I feel like there was this unfinished business.”

Had the last couple of years been any kind of normal, Costa would not have been guiding the Bobcat offense this year. As a member of the Class of 2021, he would’ve been off into the world by now, a �ֲ���ý degree in rhetoric in hand.

But after the pandemic canceled the 2020 football season, Costa did what more than a few NESCAC athletes have done: reclaim the final year of their sport by taking a semester off from their studies.

In Costa’s case, he took a leave of absence during the winter 2021 semester, and re-enrolled this fall for his final �ֲ���ý semester — and his final season of Bobcat football.

“I was just going to go straight to grad school,” he told “But I decided I love my team, I love this program, and I feel like there was this unfinished business. 

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve made.”

It’s hard to pick up where you leave off, especially when the leaving off was two years ago. To help make up for lost time, Costa made an effort over the summer to visit and connect with his receivers, even if they lived more than 3,000 miles away, in the case of Jackson Hayes ‘22 of San Marino Calif.

The Hayes-Costa connection was a huge vs. Bowdoin, as the pair hooked up for three completions, two of them for touchdowns. “It was awesome — his coming out to California to visit over the summer, and finally getting to connect during a game,” Hayes said.

The Bowdoin game saw Costa break the 44-year-old record for passing yards in one year, . Costa finished the game atop the charts with 1,680 yards this season.

“There’s a lot of great quarterbacks that have come through here. And it’s really an honor to be mentioned with those names,” Costa said.

What does the Bobcat say?

For senior offensive lineman Quinn Woods of nearby Minot, Maine, who was mic’d up at the team’s first practice of the year, on Aug. 26, the talk was all about about teamwork, technique, and oh yeah, chicken wings.

Woods, a team captain, went through drills, stretches, and ran a few plays.

“We want to be known as the guys who try way too hard,” he said to his fellow linemen. “We are those guys. Get it going. Today.”

Idle in 2020 because of the pandemic, the football team finished 2019 with a flourish, winning back-to-back games against Bowdoin and Hamilton, respectively. The Hamilton win on Nov. 9, 2019, saw the in 50 years.

�ֲ���ý opens its at 1 p.m. Sept. 18 at Garcelon Field vs. the Amherst Mammoths.

Perhaps the feelings of fall varsity athletes can be summed up by the words on a whiteboard in Alumni Gym, where new head coach Emily Hayes leads the �ֲ���ý volleyball program.

Under the header “Practice 1” on Wednesday, it read, “Thankful.”

“You will hear the same thing from everyone,” said field hockey forward Emily Gianunzio ’22 of Darien, Conn. “This is amazing. To be together on the field has been great.”

The �ֲ���ý fall sports teams haven’t played an actual intercollegiate game since 2019. Last year, they practiced, but with masks.

The first practices of the year were Wednesday. First up was men’s soccer, which took to the Garcelon Field turf at 7 a.m., the first time without masks in two years.

Head coach Tyler Sheikh was ready to put his team to the test, with a challenging conditioning session to start the morning off right.

“It’s time to kick their butts a little bit,” said Sheikh.

�ֲ���ý men’s soccer was the first of four practices for fall sports on Wednesday, as the Bobcats get ready for what promises to be a fun .

We were on-hand to capture all the excitement of men’s soccer, field hockey, women’s soccer, and volleyball’s return to action.