Fresno State Athletics
Danielle Golden at the NCAA Leadership Conference
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May 29, 2001
Today was a day filled with great ideas. We started off with each color group performing a skit, the brown group (my group) performed the six categories of athletics (diversity, with a great opening speaker by the name of Billy Mills, the 1964 Olympic Champion in Track and Field. He was describing to us what it takes to be a real leader. That with being an athlete can give a person strong life skills, which are sacred. As well that with achievement comes honor, and from honor comes responsibility. His words and experiences had really caught my attention. He spoke about when running in the 10,000-meter race of the Olympics, there were times that he was happy to settle for third but found the strength and determination to fight to gain the lead and not give up. This in turn has made me think of the times that I felt ready to stop and quit, but something was always there to push me on till the end. Call it will or pure grit and determination, but still I hung in there even when the times were tough.
He also discussed how his father was a positive role model or mentor to him. His father told Billy that even though he was hurt with broken "wings," he would heal and have the wings of an eagle. It wasn't until later that Billy understood the full meaning of his father's words. I then began to think of how my mother has influenced me in many things within my life, mostly as an equestrian. That even when I fell or got hurt that I had to get back on and start again, or quit and never have my dream come true of competing in the Olympics myself. From the words of the Jessie Owens: "Everybody should have a dream." Mr. Mills is definitely someone that I could relate with, for even though we are of different sides of the athletics world, we both face the same issues and challenges to get to where we want to be.
After the main meeting we broke into groups and attended what is called "Big Circle Discussions" where we have the choice of attending different lectures such as Civility and Sportsmanship, Dangerous Drinking, and Tolerance and Celebration of Differences. I choose to attend the Tolerance Lecture, because it sounded really interesting. In the circle we discussed issues that plague our campuses. Issues discussed included stereotype, gender and team equity and segregation. On the topic of segregation, some athletes described how different sports were imbalanced race-wise in sports, as well as how some felt that the community and the coach's influences are a factor in the segregation of athletics teams. I felt overall that this was a great experience because it is interesting to hear about the differences between universities. Personally I feel that the athletics area of Fresno State is balanced in diversity, but that we still have our issues to resolve - but it seems normal for every university to have its issues. Athletes such as Marian Appiah-Kubi of Southern IIIinois University at Carbondale (track and field), believes that teams that don't hang out enough and that university pressure definitely has an impact on the segregation of teams.
After the meeting we went to the Disney's water park. There we were tricked to believe that we would get an open fire cookout. We did but the catch was we had to cook the meal ourselves. I am proud to say that I was in charge of manning the fire, cooking grilled chicken. It was fun to do something that I have never done before, yet scary at the same time since I wanted of course to make sure that the chicken was well cooked. I didn't want anyone to end up sick with food poisoning - that would be embarrassing.
But in the end the meal went great, everybody loved the food, and had a great time of testing out the food to see if it was just right. They had us do this because they wanted us to learn how to sharpen our communication skills and leadership. It has to be known what needs to get done between the groups so that everyone can eat. After the meal we had complete control of the Disney's Water Park. We all had a great time laughing, playing and talking. As the night wore on we went back to the resort and retired to our rooms for the night. A few of us went to the pool to hang out. Overall this was another great day.