Commitment to excellence pays off for recruited athletes

﻿Many students at Chadwick work hard both inside the classroom and outside the classroom for their extracurricular activities, extracurriculars that often times include sports.

When students dedicate so much time to a certain sport, their hard work can pay off, such as when they are recruited to play for a highly competitive college or university. The number of recruited athletes in each grade at Chadwick varies from year to year.

Chadwick provides opportunities for its students to try many different types of activities, ranging from leadership roles to school plays, or even sports that they may have never played before. These opportunities that Chadwick offers helps mold students who are well-rounded and highly involved. This fact makes it even more impressive for students who are dedicated to one sport but who also continue to be involved in the Chadwick community.

“I usually try to plan ahead with homework, events and other activities so that I do not get slammed with things to do, but it is definitely manageable to balance my club sport with school activities,” junior volleyball player Courtney Bond said.

It’s quite impressive for these athletes to be able to do so much. However, there are still sacrifices to be made. Jillian Solberg, a senior at Chadwick who is committed to rowing crew at UCLA next year, agrees that being recruited by the Bruins was a major reward for everything she has sacrificed.

“When I committed, I felt like all of the early morning practices, and all of the parties, birthdays and dances that I had to miss for crew, made it all worthwhile,” Solberg said.

Like many other high schools, Chadwick does not have a crew team, so Solberg rows outside of school. She started rowing when she was in eighth grade, and has been rowing with the Marina Aquatic Center junior rowing team ever since. Because she rows outside of school, Solberg’s recruitment process took place outside of Chadwick.

“My junior year, I filled out a lot of questionnaires for a variety of schools, and the recruiting coordinator at UCLA followed up with an e-mail a couple of weeks later,” Solberg said. “I was surprised by how casual the process was. The recruiting process was mostly e-mails going back and forth about my progress and how the rowing team at UCLA works.”

There are younger athletes competing on Chadwick’s sports teams who are going through the recruiting process as well.

In addition to the process taking place outside of school, such as at college clinics or club tournaments, the coaches at Chadwick help these athletes with their recruitment.

“Coach [Anita] Drennen has been a volleyball coach for many years, so she has been very helpful to me when it comes to how to contact a coach or how to pursue a certain school,” Bond said.

Hard work does pay off, and it can allow accomplished athletes such as Solberg to realize a dream.

“To be attending a place like UCLA, where the student-athlete life is a major part of the school’s curriculum, is a dream come true,” Solberg said.a