Athletics Showcase: A Blog by Maddie Stewart '20
Life of A Tufts Student-Athlete
Hello, hello Class of 2024! Huge congratulations on being admitted to Tufts, you all should be really proud of yourselves. My name is Maddie, and aside from being a senior intern in the Admissions Office, I played 4 years of varsity volleyball for Jumbos. It was a tremendous honor to wear the brown and blue, and I will forever cherish the memories I made with teammates in Cousens Gymnasium, our home court. Today, I want to share with you the life of a Tufts student-athlete to show you that flexibility and exploration are possible as a student-athlete at Tufts.
In high school, I felt like I was put into a “volleyball” specific box. One of my biggest goals for college was to break outside this box and become a well-rounded person. In season, I was amazed that I could still take a full course load, make time to hang out with friends, and go to office hours and club meetings. You could say I was hooked on the student-athlete experience at Tufts when I learned that I could indeed do it all. From a variety of class options to studying whichever major I wanted to, I felt like the world was my oyster. I even studied abroad with Tufts-in-Madrid – athletes studying abroad is more common here than you’d think!
During the off season, aside from 3 lifts a week and a few captain’s practices per week, I found myself with free time to fill with new extracurricular opportunities. After having shrugged off being a “natural” on my feet according to some high school teachers and my parents, I decided to try out for the tour guide program. I started tour guiding my sophomore year and joining this group opened up a network of extremely interesting, talented, curious, kind and passionate people that I otherwise would have never met. While on my way to becoming a seasoned tour guide, I always reflected on how lucky I am to be a student who can participate in activities like athletics and beyond. I developed a keen interest and love for all things Tufts through tour guiding and became a more active member of the admissions program by doing the senior internship program. Additionally, I had the opportunity to run the Spanish language table and got to geek out on all things Spanish/LatinX culture, politics and music. I feel confident that I will graduate this May not only Maddie the volleyball player, but also Maddie the rock star public speaker and Maddie the Spanish nerd among other labels that I would not have been able to attain if it hadn’t been for my student-athlete experience at Tufts.
**Maddie’s blog highlights that at Tufts, athletes don’t have to chose between their athletics, academics, and other extracurricular interest. They can truly do it all! Check out these links for more examples of our multifaceted student-athletes.
“In a league of their own: athletes who do it all,” from the Fall 2019 edition of Jumbo magazine
"Engineer? Athlete? Both!" from Jumbo Engineering magazine
Tufts Softball alumna Jennifer O'Malley Dillon has been hired to run former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign. Read the New York Times article here.