Blog Note: The Fairfield Department of Athletics has several staff members that work as graduate assistant’s.  While working nearly full-time in their respective field, they are also full-time graduate students. The GA’s will team up to bring you a look at Athletics from their eyes.

Hey Everyone!!

My Name is Claire Tully and I am really excited to get the chance to start up a blog for the graduate assistants (GA) here in Athletics. I am currently in my second year as a GA for Marketing and Promotions. I get amazing opportunities to work with many of our Division I varsity sports here at Fairfield. One of my favorite things that I get to do is interact with our student-athletes. Today was one of those days!

This morning was really exciting for me because I was able to tag along with several of our student-athletes as they participated in some community service. Today was “Read Aloud Day” where Fairfield student-athletes went into Bridgeport schools and read to children. What was great about this experience was to see how energetic and engaged our student-athletes were. They might have even been more excited about today than the kids were! The day started off with us breaking into two groups for two different schools. The school that I was attending was a Special Educational school, and that is really where the magic happened.

We were greeted by extremely nice people who were to take us to each of our classrooms to read. However, before we got that chance, we were given background on the school and its students. Instead of being intimidated or turned off by the idea of having children with behavioral issues in their classrooms, the student-athletes completely embraced it!

It was amazing to see how engaged our athletes were with the kids and how the kids embraced our players. After we finished our reading we all congregated and heard hilarious stories about the different kids in each classroom. It was great to hear that our players really enjoyed the experience and even asked for opportunities to come back. Being able to partake in such a great experience is one of the great benefits of being a GA here at Fairfield.

Thanks for reading,

Claire

GO STAGS!