Scholar pulls off a hat trick with academics, activities and athletics
4/30/2012
By Megan Dutill ‘13
College Relations Intern
Note: This week, the Schreyer Honors College is showcasing five Schreyer Scholars who are members of the spring 2012 graduating class. A women’s hockey player who has attacked her studies and her activities with the same zeal she’s shown on the ice. A student who is completing the requirements for so many majors (four) along with a graduate degree that he has had to complete his graduation forms the old-fashioned way – on paper – because the computerized system doesn’t have enough fields to accurately reflect his academic record. A budding physicist who found time to complete two honors theses in between spending a summer in Switzerland working on the Large Hadron Collider and competing on Penn State’s ultimate Frisbee team. A geography major who fielded marriage proposals while conducting her thesis research in Africa. And an environmental advocate who is leaving Penn State and its residence halls a bit greener than when he arrived on campus. Today: Lady Icer Sara Chroman.
Six seconds left in overtime.
For the Penn State Lady Icers hockey team, it was enough that they had played a dramatic game and fought in overtime against an NCAA Division I team. The teams were theoretically mismatched – the Lady Icers currently compete as a club sport and won’t join the NCAA league until the 2012-2013 season.
But then they won.
“We went nuts,” says senior Sara Chroman. “It was the first NCAA Division I team Penn State has ever beaten. What made the game really special was that I could see my teammates’ confidence change. We knew we could beat them. We knew we could do it. After we scored, all of the girls flooded the ice, and we had a huge celebration. It was a moment that brought us together as a family.”
The Schreyer Scholar is used to challenging herself on the ice. Sara started playing at 6 and was the first girl to ever make her high school’s varsity team as a freshman. She then played simultaneously on the boys’ varsity team and a local traveling girls’ hockey team throughout high school.
“It’s not just a sport,” Sara says. “It’s a mental and physical and team game. You have to connect with your teammates and know your abilities, your strengths and weaknesses so that you can step back or step up. I really like the challenge of it.”
She devoted herself to the game in college, too. As a sophomore, Sara was chosen to be a part of the American Collegiate Hockey Association Women’s National Team and travelled to France and Switzerland to compete internationally. She was also the first sophomore to be elected captain of the Lady Icers, a position she’s held proudly for the last three years.
“It’s been an incredible experience, an honor and a privilege to represent those girls in everything we do – I’m so proud of them,” Sara says. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I always say that hockey has caused me to think outside the box and provided the building blocks of my leadership style. Whoever I am now, it’s because of my teammates.”
For Sara, being a captain is not just a job she holds on the ice. It’s about motivating her teammates to practice and work out, having a separate Gmail folder for all the homework she’s helped with and simply being a friend.
“For all 29 of them, I’m their No. 1 fan,” Sara says. “Whatever they need, I’m there for them, and that’s what I love to do.”
“You want a person in the captain’s seat who can motivate players and a person who is sympathetic, and that’s way beyond the letter on your jersey,” head coach Josh Brandwene says. “Sara’s done that, and she’s been an academic leader as well. The role model that she sets for the players has led us to an outstanding team GPA. Sara’s a leader in every sense of the word.”
But Sara’s leadership and enthusiasm extend far beyond the ice.
“I love Penn State because you can be so much more than a student athlete – you can be involved in so many things if you’re passionate,” Sara says. “I had to give up a lot for hockey in high school, and I wanted to be fully engaged and occupied on campus. Schreyer really provided that.”
By “fully engaged,” she means coordinating service opportunities for her teammates, like writing letters to elementary school students; working eight hours a week as the assistant business operations manager for Penn State’s student newspaper “The Daily Collegian,” and being a member of the Presidential Leadership Academy, a three-year program for select students that focuses on developing leadership and critical thinking skills. This is on top of playing hockey, writing an honors thesis on the role of ethnicity in the onset of civil war, double majoring in advertising in the College of Communications and political science in the College of the Liberal Arts, and picking up a minor in sociology.
The balancing act is good preparation for her job after graduation. Sara has accepted an offer to work as a consultant for Deloitte, which she says is a perfect fit because the work is always changing. She’ll spend the first year in their rotational program, starting with public sector consulting.
While it will be “definitely exciting, but weird,” to watch the Lady Icers playing on NCAA ice without her next fall, Sara plans to keep playing at a non-competitive level.
“I’ll always skate, always play,” Sara says. “I’ll never lose it – hockey players are a unique breed.”