Fresno State Athletics
Danielle Golden at the NCAA Leadership Conference
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May 28, 2001
My adventure started out by catching my 7:10 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fla. I just have to brag and say that the flight was great, because the plane was partly half-filled. I couldn't help but wonder who on the plane was going to the conference. I sat back and enjoyed the ride, until I saw one man, and curiosity got the better of me and I asked him if he was going to the conference. It turned out that he was, and that his name was Chris, he is from USC, which is just a few blocks from where I live.
I arrived at Coronado Springs Resort at 5 p.m. I went to my room to freshen up before the start of the conference. Everyone was separated into color groups, and enjoyed a delicious pizza party. We started out with a lecture from Cedric Dempsey and Ron Stratten (Head of the NCAA Educational Services). They were telling us how fortunate we are to be here, representing not only ourselves as leaders, but also representing our sport, school, coaches and athletics director. It still amazes me that out of four nominees from Fresno State for a chance at this conference that I was chosen. We were told the rules and code of conduct that should be demonstrated in public. As well as that we are the representatives of the NCAA, and that we have to be positive role models to others.
After the opening ceremonies we went back to our color groups (mine being the brown group), and were faced with a group challenge. The challenge was to balance a balloon between each other, and had to walk together as a group to the finish line, we were timed at 33 seconds with no faults. This challenge in my opinion was to demonstrate how to work together, and more importantly how to communicate, because we all agreed on what foot to start off on. We all settled down and made introductions, I noted that most came from Missouri, Oklahoma, Canada, New Jersey and International. In the group we discussed the objectives of the conference, which is to understand and apply a leadership model, build a network with other student-athlete leaders, become a more confident and stronger agent of change, prepare and complete a self-directed project that will address critical campus issues and sharing our experiences with the campus student-athlete advisory committee and other leaders.
Later, we got into smaller group and discussed what we each hoped to achieve in the conference, as well as what we planned to do with what we learned at the conference. For me I hope to become an even more stronger leader, I know that I am a leader in many things, but there is room for improvement. When I come back to the campus, I want to establish the presence of not only my sport (equestrian), but also others that aren't as recognized as compared to football and men's basketball. One of my group members is named Karen Niwinski of Villanova University (she plays softball), she hopes to become a stronger leader and to spread and teach leadership to other teams of her campus. Another by the name of Tyler McConigal of State University of New York Binghamton (men's basketball) hopes to also become a stronger leader so that when he goes back to his school he will be able to talk more to other people (converse more). The next member is Jason Griffith (swimmer) of Indiana University. He wants to inspire people in order to form a foundation between athletes and students. The last is named Rebecca Patton (basketball) of Missouri West State College. She hopes to learn how to deal with campus issues as well as form a stronger bond between students and athletes having them come together.
After the group meeting we all came together, and had a music session, where we learned that like instruments that come in different colors and sizes, it is the same with people. I message was that if everyone was the same, things would get really boring.