Cal Poly athletes excel on the field and the classroom

Tamara Wells (Women’s basketball)

As business administration senior Tamara Wells is about to walk the stage for her 2011 graduation, her biggest and proudest accomplishment awaits her on the other side.

“Getting a degree at Cal Poly is big enough,” Wells said. “The struggles going through it to graduate from a university as prestigious as Cal Poly is (rewarding enough).”

With an overall GPA of 2.9, Wells said she has Cal Poly services to thank for her academic achievements.

“I use my resources,” she said. “I got a lot of help from workshops and tutors.”

And with these tools, this Riverside, Calif., native was able to be a part of a team that made it all the way to the Big West Championship game, while also being a full-time student to earn her degree in business administration.

“Student athlete is two jobs,” Wells said. “Some people don’t realize that we work hard.”

With the hard work Wells has completed throughout the years, she knows that balancing sports and school will help in her career. As she prepares for her future career, Wells said she questions whether or not she will continue to play basketball professionally after Cal Poly.

“I thought it, but my body isn’t the same,” Wells said. “I feel more achy, and I want to go a different avenue and look at careers.”

But even if she does not further her participation in athletics, Wells said there is a correlation between her career field and playing on the court.

“Everything I learned from sports, I learned in business,” Wells said. “I think it’s helped me out a lot academically. Business starts with teamwork and being a leader, and that’s all basketball. Being a team player and working together to make it is like the business world. It’s the balance.”

Kristen Sanzari (Track and Field)

Kristen Sanzari runs toward her dreams and doesn’t let anything stop her.

Originally from Santa Rosa, Calif., Sanzari will soon graduate from Cal Poly with a degree in art and design. This player learned to make her dreams possible by balancing her time between school and her four years of Cal Poly track and field experience.

“The big thing is time,” Sanzari said. “For me, the busier I am, the more schedule-oriented I am. I’m better with a busy schedule. I’d be wasting time if I had nothing.”

Graduating with an overall GPA of 3.58, Sanzari found that time management played a role in her ability to maintain both a spot on the team and a seat in the graduation ceremony.

“It’s really about focusing on your sport and school and making sure you have time to do well in both,” she said. “A lot of it has to do with organization and planning. I definitely keep a planned weekly calendar to help me stay on top of everything.”

Staying on top of everything helped Sanzari be a part of various activities. She is a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and works as a graphic designer for newspaper advertisements in the Mustang Athletics department. Furthermore, she is the track and field representative in the Cal Poly Student-Athlete Advisory Committee of Block P, which promotes student-athletes in the community as well as becoming an active member in community service events.

Currently, Sanzari is deciding between two schools to earn her master’s degree, which is her proudest academic achievement.

“Getting into grad school helped me step out of my comfort zone,” Sanzari said.

Whether she will attend the Academy of Arts for animation or Expression for Digital Media for motion graphics, she can’t help but miss all the things she’ll leave behind at Cal Poly.

“(I’ll miss) the people, the coaches and all my friends,” Sanzari said. “I absolutely love the Cal Poly campus and the surroundings of SLO. It will be weird to be in a city compared to here.”

Carly Rowan (Swimming and Diving)

At the end of spring quarter, journalism senior Carly Rowan said she was ready to graduate from Cal Poly as well as finish her swimming years.

“As much as I miss swimming, it’s nice to have a break and not go to practice and have more social time with friends,” Rowan said. “You have more free time like a normal college kid. I get to do things I haven’t had time to do in the past years.”

And over the past four years, Rowan has accumulated an overall GPA of 3.78 in addition to swimming for the Mustangs. Graduating with “one of the top GPAs (was) such a time commitment,” Rowan said, but it paid off in the end.

“I’m really proud of the GPA I’m graduating with and being on the Dean’s List all but two quarters,” Rowan said. “What I’ve taken away from Cal Poly is my major and minor together are so targeted at what I want to do.”

With a public relations concentration and a minor in wine and viticulture, Rowan said she wants to work for event planning in vineyards back in her hometown in Eugene, Ore. But returning to her hometown more than 700 miles away, there are some things Rowan said she is going to miss about San Luis Obispo.

“I’ll miss the weather a ton because I’m from Oregon,” Rowan said. “I do (also) miss being a part of a swim team and all that comes with a team (such as) team dynamics and friends,” Rowan said.

Being a part of this “lifestyle that (she’s) been used to” didn’t come easy. As a member of the Cal Poly swim team, learning to balance both sports and school was something she learned over the years.

“I had such a set schedule that after practice, I had to do school work,” Rowan said. “I would never be able to stay up super late because of practice in the morning.”

And having these skills is something she believes will help her in the future.

“You learn how a team is like a workplace, and you have to learn how to work well and play well with others,” Rowan said.

She said she also learned how to work well by teaching herself how to be on top of things and doing what she needed to do.

“I think for a lot of college swimmers to make it through four years of swimming and college is really intense,” Rowan said. “I was just really happy that I made it through four years of swimming.”

Will Mitchell (Football)

Will Mitchell is a familiar face in the limelight.

In December 2010, Mitchell was the third Cal Poly player in the postseason to be named an All-American. The offensive guard was also selected to Phil Steele’s 2010 Football Championship Subdivision Postseason All-American Fourth Team.

Not only that, but the former student athlete from San Francisco graduated with a 3.0 GPA and a degree in psychology. But all that didn’t come easy. With self-motivation, Mitchell was able to accomplish exactly what he wanted to.

“Having a planned schedule helped a lot and having to buckle down,” Mitchell said. “Because sports only come with the grades. But personally, I wanted to excel.”

In june, Mitchell said he was planning to look into graduate schools to get his master’s degree — where he hopes to pursue becoming a family therapist.

In terms of football, Mitchell ended his career as a Mustang wandering the field as a leader for the team.

“I’ll be helping the team, but I want to distance myself to give them new leadership; for them to be their own team and be their own leaders,” Mitchell said. “They know I’ll be coming back coaching, but I want them to grow. That they can’t come to me (for everything) because I won’t be on the field with them.”

Nevertheless, Mitchell is using this opportunity to gain experience and preparation for graduate school, he said. And once Mitchell leaves San Luis Obispo, there is one thing he will miss the most.

“My teammates,” Mitchell said. “Being around the guys was like you had 100 brothers.”

And with the support of his team as well as the incentive to do well in both football and school, Mitchell is pleased with the results.

“A lot of people I talk to are graduating with a GPA of 3.6 or 3.7,” Mitchell said. “It’s all really about what you make it. I just worked hard, went to office hours like crazy, and I’m proud to say that I’m graduating with a 3.0.”

Bridie McCarry (Track and Field)

When it came to sports and academics, kinesiology senior Bridie McCarry saw them as intertwined instead of as two opposing forces.

“I feel like they both go hand-in-hand,” McCarry said. “You have to learn how to be more efficient, since you have less down time. And you have less time to procrastinate.”

With tutors that helped her stay on top of things, McCarry will graduate from Cal Poly with a 3.0 GPA.

In the future, McCarry said she plans to apply for Physical Assistant schools. With her kinesiology degree, McCarry said one of the proudest academic accomplishments was completing her senior project.

“Me and Dr. (David) Hey worked together to submit a paper to a journal to be published,” McCarry said. “It was based on kinesiology and engineering students working together on adaptive physical equipment for people with disability.”

McCarry said this specific project was something she worked really hard on and was a big accomplishment. Not only that but athletically, she pulled off her fastest time for both 5K and 10K during her last track season, after recuperating from an injury earlier in the season.

Even though she was unsure of whether she said she would continue track and field professionally after Cal Poly, she will keep on running nonetheless.

“Running is something you can continue with easily because you don’t have to necessarily be a part of a team,” McCarry said. “I’ll continue running recreationally, (but now) I can look for other passions and have other goals that aren’t related to running.”

As McCarry got ready to leave Cal Poly behind, there was one thing that she was going to miss the most about San Luis Obispo: the community.

“Everyone here is really friendly and everything’s convenient and close,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place to live, and it’s a comfortable environment.”

Caitlin Lee (Swimming and Diving)

For Caitlin Lee, swimming was the boost of self-esteem that helped her through her years at Cal Poly.

“Swimming has definitely given me a lot of confidence — not because I’m the fastest swimmer, but because I can put in the work and make it worth my time,” Lee said.

The kinesiology senior from Nevada City, Calif. earned an overall GPA of 3.8 during her four years at the university. With the help of making lists and managing her time effectively, she was able to keep her priorities straight, she said.

“It was hard balancing all (of my) classes,” Lee said. “It’s a lot of just making sure you can stay on top of your work for classes.”

And now that she is done with both school and swimming at Cal Poly, Lee said she is contemplating whether she will be motivated enough to jump back into the pool.

“It’s one thing to get yourself motivated,” Lee said. “I don’t plan on (swimming) competitively. I swim about twice a week because it’s what I’ve known for so long, and it’s a good way to stay in shape. If I do continue, it will be strictly to work out for the heck of it.”

When Lee started her first year at Cal Poly, she didn’t know if she would even be swimming — especially how the way things were during her first practice.

“I remember my first practice freshman year,” she said. “It was probably one of the hardest I’ve ever done all four years. I was thinking, ‘How am I going to make it through this?’”

But four years later, she’s still swimming. And being a part of the team has taught her individuality as well as team dynamics.

“Swimming is like an individual sport and a team sport,” Lee said “You’re the only one swimming for yourself, but whatever points you get go towards the team.”

The team has helped Lee stay busy as she worked toward her kinesiology degree, she said. Lee is an officer in the Physician’s Assistant Nurse Practitioners Club (PANP) and has spent time working with the FLASH study through the kinesiology department.

This led Lee to be proud of her academic achievements at Cal Poly, she said.

“Academically, I’m proud that I’ve been able to maintain the grade point average that I have on top of everything else,” Lee said.

But as she departed San Luis Obispo, she said she would miss the community and the environment in which she lived in for the past four years.

“What I’ll miss the most is probably just the whole environment — whether it’s with swim team or classmates,” Lee said “Everyone enjoys it here, so there’s all this positive atmosphere. No matter what kind of person you are, you can get the most out of it (in San Luis Obispo), and that’s not something that you can get everywhere,” Lee said.

And for Lee, she is proud and pleased with her time at Cal Poly.

“I’ve enjoyed most of it,” Lee said. “I can’t really complain.”