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independentartistbuzz · 5 years

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7 From The Women is a segment here on Independent Artist Buzz where we ask some of the industries finest seven questions. During this time of accusations and the lack thereof, we think it’s important to give women a voice. We chose to ask seven questions to honor the seven Wiccan clans.

Kristen Rae Bowden is a beautiful turmoil of tenderness and willfulness. It’s a paradoxical sentiment also evident in her artistic sensibilities. In her upcoming debut, Language and Mirrors, she fluidly, and authentically, inhabits earthy Americana and majestic orchestral rock.

What have you been working to promote lately?

In November 2018 I released my first album, entitled “Language and Mirrors.” On March 15 2019 I will release my first music video from the album. The video is for my song “It Isn’t About You.”

I wrote “It Isn’t About You” while living in a screened-in-shack with no power on the Big Island of Hawaii. I was 22, fresh from college, excited by the idea of living “off the grid”, and very much in love with a young man whose family owned land in Hawaii. After we moved there, however, our relationship quickly deteriorated, practically turning to dust before my eyes. I felt powerless to save it, or leave.

I found myself on a metaphorical island, as well as a real one, and my feeling of isolation stemmed from my obsession with the unhealthy relationship. It became difficult for me to imagine myself outside of it; I no longer felt whole on my own.

Even without electricity, I remained a night owl. I stayed up alone in the tiny dark house on the edge of the jungle, drinking wine, and writing poetry by candlelight. This is how I wrote “It Isn’t About You”: as part of a long, freeform poem. (It is one of my only songs where I wrote the lyrics first.)

Later, I put the poem to music, after I finally got the courage to leave the relationship, and I’d steadied my mind. The song is about making that return to yourself and your own joys, strengths, and needs. It is also about taking responsibility for your own choices, so that you never feel (unnecessarily) like a victim, and you can move on.

The music video for “It Isn’t About You” will premiere on Facebook Premiere on Friday March 15 at 1:00 pm.

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

I think, after all these years, my favorite track written by a woman is still Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”. The melody starts out conversational, understated, and then it soars! The simplicity of the instrumentation creates such an intimate experience, you feel like she’s in your living room, singing right in your ear. You hear every word, which is perfect because her lyrics go straight to the heart.

The beauty of the poem alone overwhelms me. Joni has a way of writing lyrics that are very specific to her own experience, and full of imagery, but when I listen to them, I feel like they are about me too. Much like an abstract painting where different people will see different things, Joni’s artful words allow you to color them with your own experience. This makes me feel truly known, and comforted somehow as a human being, because I know I’m not alone.

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music/in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

When I decided I wanted to become a career musician, I didn’t think at all about my gender. I just knew I wanted to make music; that’s all I thought about.

Now, I believe that as a woman in the music industry, I have the opportunity to showcase a more feminine (as in the divine) incarnation of strength. As a culture I think we view strength in a very masculine way; it often means hardness, stoicism. I believe we tend to ignore the strength that it takes to be vulnerable... the strength that lies in open-heartedness and flexibility. After all, a branch that cannot bend is more likely to break. In my songs, I find myself wanting to express this: how brave one must be to remain open-hearted. I think it is something I have to offer that has to do with my womanhood and femininity.

When I write I honestly don’t feel a responsibility to create certain messages and themes in my music. I write according to my feelings, so those end up being the messages and themes. However, when I write a song about a certain moment in my life, I definitely listen critically to the song and ask myself what kind of message it is going to send into the world.

Once I wrote a song about a previous boyfriend cheating on me with a girl who I really thought was my friend. They both lied to me about it for several weeks. It was overwhelmingly hurtful. Some men say they have a “bro’s code” to not let women come between them. So, I wrote this song about the lack of a “girls code”, and basically sang about how I knew my boyfriend at the time was going to lie to me, that was obvious. But I never expected my woman friend to be a part of it, sneaking around and lying to me also.

Later I realized I couldn’t release the song, because of the message one might take from it. My lyrics ended up sounding too much like a woman who blames the other woman when her significant other lies to her, instead of holding him responsible, and also taking responsibility for the choice she has made to be with him. What that particular “friend” did to me was unkind, but I don’t ever want to sound like a woman who puts other women down as a group. I didn’t want to risk being interpreted in that way.

I hope to be a voice of catharsis, empowerment, and empathy.

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

My most personal song is “My Father’s Daughter”. My Dad was an extremely charismatic, artistic, and captivating man. He was also quite the womanizer. He passed away when I was 18, and I still miss him every single day.

I think as a girl, when you grow up with a Dad who is your absolute favorite person, but over time you learn about some of his negative proclivities, you’ll have some kind of emotional reaction. And the reaction will be based (at least in part) on how you are his daughter. If you were his son, you might respond quite differently.

“My Father’s Daughter” is really about me getting into a relationship with a man who had also lost his artistic (and womanizing) father. He had a daddy-backstory similar to mine, but he had responded in a completely different way. We could understand each other better in some ways due to the similarities in our respective Dads’ personalities, but in other ways we really had no hope of ever understanding each other.

The song also has to do with the fact that sometimes, there is no stronger bond than shared grief.

I think this is the most personal thing I’ve written as it relates to being female, because it’s specific to what we would call “Daddy issues”. Anyone can have Daddy issues, regardless of their gender, but being female definitely effects how these complicated feelings play out in one’s life. This is true for me, at least.

What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

So many! I’ve already mentioned Joni Mitchell. I just finished reading “Just Kids” and Patti Smith is a poetic hero. Others include Joan Jett, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline, Erykah Badu, Zap Mama, Emmylou Harris, Iris DeMent, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Amy Winehouse, Bjork, Lady Gaga, Billie Holiday, Ani DiFranco, and Tracy Chapman.

Who was the first female artist you saw that made you want to create music / be in the business?

When I was 19, my sister and I went to see Ani DiFranco. I remember loving how the audience was overwhelmingly female, right as I walked in. I noted to myself how rare it is to be in the company of mostly women, at least for me. Ani sang her songs and I think everyone in the theater was affected, you could just feel it in the air. I laughed and I cried. I marveled at how she connected with each member of the audience personally ; she made each of us feel like we’d met her. Each of her songs consistently blew me away with her confessional storytelling. She stirred my emotions and completely inspired me.

The next night I went into a practice room at my college, played the piano, and wrote my first real song. I didn’t mean to write it ; it surprised me. It was about my Dad dying, which had happened about a year before. I scribbled it on a cocktail napkin that I’ve saved ever since.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so why and if not why?

I definitely consider myself a feminist. Women deserve equal rights and bodily autonomy, period. I grew up very privileged, in a community/culture that told me I could be anything I wanted, so I have to admit I was rather shocked to find out that some people still think women aren’t supposed to do certain jobs or have certain roles in life. I also grew up in a very homogenous community. For a long time I was very ignorant when it comes to the idea of intersectional feminism, and I still have a lot to learn about how feminism can exclude the experiences and points of view of women of color and LGBTQ women. It is important to me to be an ally to all women, especially those in minority communities, as they are the ones who are most effected by sexism and discrimination. Learning how to be a good ally is an ongoing process, and I consider it my responsibility to educate myself about issues outside of my personal experience. All in all, I am a feminist because women are still so marginalized, all over the world. Women’s rights are human rights, and as long as things remain unbalanced, this deserves our constant attention.

Connect with Kristen online:

https://www.kristenraebowden.com

https://www.facebook.com/KristenRaeBowden/

https://www.instagram.com/kristenraebowden/

https://twitter.com/bowdenrae?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PPhdmifjwxW8fkF_CxIoQ

https://kristenraebowden.tumblr.com/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mi6KqRPH72KiS6r1A9ePI?nd=1

https://soundcloud.com/kristenraebowden

https://kristenraebowden.bandcamp.com/releases

#kristen rae bowden #7 from the women #female musician #girl power #feminism #feminist #indie music #indie artist #iab #independent artist buzz

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penguinrecovery96 · 5 years

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Update -tw which account for pretty much all my posts

So I didn't see my care coordinator N on Monday cause there was some sort of emergency that had come in to the team and she is one of the team managers so obviously she had to take that. I obviously was understanding but it really does hurt when you are counting on a particularly contact to happen and you haven't slept in 36 hours due to pure anxiety. I was devastated because I have really been struggling and I have had no idea about what was happening with my treatment whatsoever. I didn't want to deal with it so I took sleeping pills to sedate me.

Tuesday. During the night I just knew that I wasn't going to be seeing N. I just knew something was going to get in the way and I was 100% right! I got a call from H (another cmht member) who said that N was ill and it was looking like she wasn't going to be in till next week now. She asked me how I was doing so I told her that I wasn't good and that I was kinda reliant on today's meeting. She said she could come out and see me but just stress got to much and I hung up. She called me straight back and left a message for me to call her. When I calmed down enough I phoned back and just pretty much blurted out how things had been and agreed for her to come and see me. I really don't like meeting new people so it scared me but I knew I had to try and be as honest as I could do I wrote it all out and just gave her that. I don't really remember much of her reaction but H was nice and tried to listen and take in as much as she could. I just kept saying that I'm lost and I don't know how people can help me. I cried. She said she would read my notes and call me to check in and update me cause I don't know what N was thinking for my care. I also asked for her to speak with the psychiatrist about meds and/ or an appointment with her. I also spoke about my concerns that N hates me/ infuriated by me and that I feel like a burden (bpd is fucking shit!). Obviously I need to hear N's direct response to that but H said that N had called her specifically after notifying the the office of her absence to ask her to check in on me because she was concerned. I think that says a lot because I have had plenty of mental health professionals involved with me who wouldn't have cared to that degree especially if they were sick. I know that N cares. I know that this may come across as weird but I actually dreamt about her. She rang me up from her sick bed and basically said "I know that your care seems shit right now and it's all over the place but I am going to sort this myself because no one else is!" I think that was me just needing an N's no bullshit response! I like that she tells me how it is and that apart from the past 10 days my care has been really transparent. I need that.

Wednesday. I woke up at 12. Only used a Promazine and a single sleeping pill. I felt like utter shit. I spent an hour or so just lying in bed aimlessly scrolling through my phone. Rang cmht to leave a note for H which I don't think she got. At about 2:50 I got a call from HTT which I was not expecting. The lady was lovely. She was called A. She asked me how I felt about being under HTT and I basically ran the whole story through and that I hadnt had support till yesterday which was less than I was meant to be getting, went through the external situations I've been dealing with and how I've just completely crashed with my mental health. I told her the reason why my notes say I was in agreement to HTT but also all the reasons that have left me hesitant to be involved with them. We spoke for 48 minutes. A said she really does think I need to be under them right now and that they really need to see me face to face. She thinks that there was miscommunication between all parties involved and that is why contact hasn't happened. I said that if I'm going to be involved I completely understand the way that the service is set up but I would want to try and make it as consistent as we possibly could. So I basically would prefer to have a small group of people that I see rather than just a random person each time. I cannot deal with that. Not only because you never know who you are seeing but because you end up just having to spend half the appointment filling in all the backstory for them and that is traumatic. You don't end up working on anything because of that. A said that is completely understandable and that we will try to do that. She is going to try and get M who I worked with over the summer and got on well with (I am scared to see her again but I know that it will be better). She said that tomorrow is really full with appointments so I will definitely be seeing either her or M or both on Friday. I hope that it is both of them cause I want to meet A. I may get an appointment tomorrow if there is a cancellation but it's unlikely but I'm penciled in for phone contact.

I called H at cmht to update her and we spoke about how good that was. She read my notes but wasn't really sure what N was planning because that hadn't been alluded to since Tuesday so it was difficult because obviously she is sick. She spoke to the psychiatrist and she had said she was not going to give me any zopiclone because of the way that I am presenting at the moment and that it wouldn't even be considered until HTT made a decision and had properly assessed me. The risk is too high. So that wasn't how I wanted any of that to go really but I understand and glad that H was so supportive and happy about HTT. I'm trying to keep an open mind about their involvement. H also said if I needed it one of their team members could take me to the appointment on Friday. I'm going to see how I feel. I'm not sure they can guarantee this womans availability to do so and she would literally just be dropping me off so I will probably decline that.

I struggled today really bad with thoughts surrounding overdosing and I almost did it but ended up cutting for the first time in 9 days so I kinda felt like a failure for that. I ended up binging and purging too. Dad heard me but I managed to disguise the truth cause he just thinks I'm sick physically so thank fuck I dodged a bullet. I'm most likely taking Promazine and sleeping pills tonight cause my head is a mess. I'm probably not going to have contact with people tomorrow so I would rather opt out for as much of it as possible. Appointment on Friday and I am hoping that I manage to get this small team of people around me who are really supportive and encouraging and funny. People who can pull me out of this cause this girl does not want to end up back in hospital!

#trying #home treatment team #crisis team #mental health crisis #trigger warning #bpd #actually bpd #cmht #care coordinator #mental health #mental health professionals #bulimic #purge #overdosing #self harm

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Midnight Sky: How George Clooney Made His Emotional and Timely Sci-Fi Movie

https://ift.tt/2WKb7AN

George Clooney has a relatively simple answer when asked by Den of Geek what inspired him to make his first science fiction film as a director, The Midnight Sky.

“I thought I had a take on it, you know?” says Clooney, who also stars in his seventh outing behind the camera. “I felt like there was a story that I understood in a way about what we’re capable of doing to one another if we don’t pay attention, if we don’t listen to science, if we don’t pay attention to divisions and hatred and pay that forward. I thought I had an understanding of that.”

We’re speaking with Clooney via Zoom, of course, in the ninth month of the never-ending COVID-19 pandemic, and after briefly commiserating about the last time we saw our parents (eight months for him, longer for us), we turn to the film, which is based on a novel called Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Dalton-Brooks and premieres on Netflix this week.

In the film, Clooney plays Augustine Lofthouse, a brilliant but lonely astrophysicist stationed at a remote Arctic research facility. It’s three weeks after “the Event,” an unspecified global cataclysm that is spewing enough radiation into the atmosphere to make the Earth uninhabitable. With the rest of the station’s crew headed south to reunite with their families and either prepare for the end or find a place to hide out, Augustine — who’s suffering from a terminal illness — decides to stay behind.

But he also has an important mission to complete with the time he has left to him: contacting the crew of an exploratory ship that’s returning from a habitable moon orbiting Jupiter and warning them to turn back and start a new life there (Augustine himself discovered the planetoid). Meanwhile, the ship’s crew, headed by David Oyelowo and a pregnant Felicity Jones, grow increasingly uneasy at the silence from Earth even as their craft is buffeted by asteroids and other dangers.

At the same time, Augustine finds himself caring for a little girl named Iris (Caiolinn Springall) who can’t speak and has apparently been left behind accidentally. He also learns that the transmitter at the facility isn’t powerful enough to communicate with the vessel. With the girl in tow, Augustine begins a treacherous journey through the ice and snow to reach another station with a stronger transmitter.

“I had an idea of the story I wanted to tell,” continues Clooney. “And when I talked to Netflix, I said, ‘This isn’t an action film, it’s a meditation. It’s a conversation about regret and about redemption. We’re going to take out some of the lines and we’re going to use score to tell the story,’ And they, to their credit, said, ‘Great.’”

The Midnight Sky is marked by passages of silence or sparse dialogue, particularly during the Earthbound scenes, but dialogue and personal drama are nothing new to Clooney, whose previous directorial efforts include films like Good Night, and Good Luck and The Ides of March. But even when it came to the effects-heavy material set on the ship or in space, the director wasn’t fazed.

“I’d done a couple of space movies so I had some understanding of how difficult space would be and what the preparation for it would be,” Clooney explains, referring to his starring turns in Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. He adds that he didn’t call his old friends and directors for advice on shooting the space-based scenes either.

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“I was on the set (on those movies),” Clooney elaborates. “I didn’t go back to the trailer. I’m from Kentucky. We try to stay out of trailers, you know what I mean? So I’ve always sat on sets. And I watched Alfonso and Steven. Alfonso, particularly for the spacewalk stuff, the things that he and Chivo (cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) did were really helpful.”

Clooney’s actors had to prepare for the spacewalk sequences in a different way. Tiffany Boone, who plays the astronaut Maya on her first mission aboard the Aether, explains, “I watched every documentary and every docu-series I could specifically about long periods in space. There was one that a few of us watched… I watched, I read books, I just, I really tried to find out what that experience is kind of like to be in space for a little while.”

Boone adds that she hired a trainer in preparation for the spacewalk sequence, saying, “I went to London and I worked on my core there. Every day that I was in London, I was training pretty much. Wire work, core training, and pretending to be in zero gravity. That little spacewalk that you see, that lasts under 10 minutes in the movie, took for me a good four or five months in total to make happen.”

Both Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo agree that getting to play astronauts in a movie scratches some kind of childhood itch — although in Jones’ case, only up to a point.

“I think it’s definitely one of those professions that you think, ‘Gosh, that would be a pretty exciting one,’” the Rogue One star says. “I think as I got older, I found it less enticing to want to go off into space. I’m not into small enclosed spaces, so I think I’d find the claustrophobia a bit too much. It’s extraordinary, these astronauts who go up and spend a year in space. I think that’s so admirable because to be an astronaut, there’s a huge element of self-sacrifice because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Unlike in Gravity, Clooney does not walk in space himself in The Midnight Sky, but went through a physical transformation of a different sort. To play the dying Lofthouse, Clooney lost weight and made sure to shoot his own scenes first — with the focus on the march across the Arctic plains.

Philippe Antonello/Netflix

Oyelowo adds, “I think being an astronaut in a movie’s a little bit like being a cowboy or being a detective. There’s something iconic about those professions when it comes to cinema, not least because great actors have made them iconic.” He expands on that, saying, “When you get in that suit, when you get on set, you do feel like you are stepping into one of the special opportunities afforded an actor when it comes to cinema. Especially when it’s a film on this grand scale.”

“It would have been really hard to do it the other way around,“ he says. “The beauty of it is for us, literally, we only shot my stuff first and then we only shot their stuff afterwards. There wasn’t this sort of crossbreeding that can make things really difficult and hard to do. It’s hard to jump back in an actor’s chair where you’re directing yourself. So I had a great advantage by being able to schedule it that way.”

Another member of the cast, Felicity Jones, was also going through her own physical transformation of sorts while shooting the movie: she was pregnant with her first child. But rather than treat that as an impediment, to be filmed around or ignored (or worse, used as a reason to replace the actress, like a studio might have done in the old days), Clooney came up with a better solution: Jones’ pregnancy was written into the script, adding another layer to the stakes facing the crew of the Aether.

“It’s extraordinary, when you look at the list of actresses who’ve been pregnant while shooting, you’d be surprised that in some of the most iconic films in history, the leading actress has been pregnant,” says Jones. “But for the most part, pregnancy has been something that has been CGI’d out or disguised. So it felt revolutionary. It did feel very special that in a film of this scope and scale, having a pregnant astronaut is pretty spectacular and it was a testament to George’s modernity that he wasn’t scared of it, that he embraced it, and saw how it could benefit the storytelling.”

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Indeed, the idea that Jones’ character Sully, her unborn baby and her fellow crew members could be the last humans left alive is perhaps even more profound now, nine months into a pandemic that seems to show no signs of ending, than it was when Clooney and company first started shooting the movie. “We finished shooting in early February,” the director says. “We came to LA to start the editing, and immediately we were told to lock down. I wasn’t able to see my parents, we weren’t able to see our family, like we just talked about.”

But as Clooney and his team began editing the film, the space-based, post-apocalyptic thriller took on a different tone. “It became clear that it was a story about our inability to communicate, our inability to be home, our inability to be near the people that we love and hold them and touch them,” Clooney explains. “We were able to, in the editing, lean into the elements that say that we didn’t understand until you took it away how important our ability to communicate is.”

Tiffany Boone muses that audiences watching The Midnight Sky will get something different out of it than they might have if the world hadn’t turned upside down in 2020. “Part of why I love the script is because I thought it was really timely and had something to say about the times we were living under,” she says. “I had no idea it would be as relevant as it is…that’s all of our reality, being separated from the people we love and hoping that they’re taking care of themselves and trying to find some connection even when we can’t be in person.” She concludes, “I think it’s going to hit people even harder.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Midnight Sky premieres Wednesday (December 23) on Netflix.

The post The Midnight Sky: How George Clooney Made His Emotional and Timely Sci-Fi Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

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timselgo · 7 years

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Blog #42 – The Return on the Recruiting Investment (excerpt from my upcoming book, Anchor Up: Competitive Greatness the Grand Valley Way)

Over the next six weeks, I will be sharing excerpts in my blog from my upcoming book, Anchor Up: Competitive Greatness the Grand Valley Way. The book is scheduled for release May 9. This is an excerpt from the chapter that provides stories of demonstrations of competitive greatness from some of our finest student-athletes at GVSU that I was honored to have been leader of. This is the story of Andrea Strauss, the goalie on our 2014 national champion women’s soccer team. I hope you will enjoy it. There are more great stories in the book. Stay tuned!

We recruited hundreds of great athletes to Grand Valley State over time, and I was fortunate to watch many of them achieve the competitive greatness we aspired for them to seek. Remember the importance of recruiting the best talent you can. That’s true for any sports team, business, or organization. Then once you have them in your program or business, you must teach and develop them to be the best they can be. As a teacher by trade, I received great satisfaction in watching so many of our student-athletes develop into the type of young men and young women of whom anyone would be proud.

I’ve already talked about Grand Valley tennis player Chris Penzien’s competitive greatness and how it led to our first Presidents’ Cup in 1999, but these additional stories of competitive greatness have stuck with me through the years.

Competitive Greatness: Andrea Strauss

It was Thursday, December 4, 2014, and Grand Valley State’s women’s soccer team had just fought its way to a 1-1 draw through regulation and overtime against Saint Rose College in the national semifinal of the Division II championship tournament. Something had to give.

In college soccer, when you need to determine a winner for the sake of advancement, the deciding factor is a penalty-kick shootout in which teams take turns having players attempt penalty kicks with only the goalkeeper defending. Whether you’ve played or watched soccer or not, it’s the single most difficult play to defend because the kicker knows where the ball is going and the goalie doesn’t. Advantage: kicker.

Saint Rose was the first to try. And I was looking squarely at our goalkeeper, a determined young lady by the name of Andrea Strauss, thinking to myself, she is all that’s standing between a possible national championship and going home.

This was not what was going through our coaches’ minds two years ago when they asked Andrea to try out for the team—as a backup. Andrea came to Grand Valley from Troy, Michigan, not as a scholarship athlete but as a student who played on our school’s club team for two years. Our coaches watched her play a little bit and thought Andrea was good enough for a backup role, and they invited her to tryouts after her sophomore year.

She accepted and made the team as a walk-on. As a junior, Andrea saw little playing time behind our senior starter. Our team was good enough that year to where she earned some mop-up play, but no meaningful minutes.

Then in May during the offseason, our head coach, Dave DiIanni, received an offer he couldn’t refuse to be the head coach at Division I Iowa. The one goalie ahead of Andrea on the depth chart had been diagnosed with a heart issue and was medically ruled out. Dave had been recruiting a junior college player before the Iowa job came up, and he told me on his way out he had saved $2,000 in scholarship money to give to Andrea in case he couldn’t lure the Juco prospect.

After Dave left for Iowa, the recruiting trail with the Juco prospect cooled off. Without any other options, we turned all our focus to Andrea. That meant a walk-on from our club team was going to lead our defending champion Lakers onto the pitch for the 2014 season.

When I called Andrea in June to let her know, based on Dave’s recommendation, we were awarding her $2,000 in athletics-based aid, she of course was grateful for the financial assistance. Her resolve regarding the position she’d suddenly been thrust into serving was a question. I ended the conversation by saying, “You know, Andrea, you guys report to preseason practice August 10, and you have to be ready to go.”

I’ll never forget her answer: “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Selgo, I’ll be ready.”

She said it with such conviction that I stared at the phone for a while, thinking this girl might have something after all.

And indeed she did. During the season I saw her play with a hunger I hadn’t witnessed in some previous Laker goalies who had been All-Americans.

This all crossed my mind when Saint Rose was lining up its first shootout kick against Andrea Strauss, and I was wondering what it would be like to be her right now after all she had been through to reach this stage. Was she the kind of player who relished the challenge, or was she afraid of being the goat?

That first kick was a low screamer. Andrea dove to her left and blocked it away with her hands. She came up off the turf and delivered a first pump, making it clear Andrea Strauss was no longer a walk-on. I turned to Keri Becker, my associate AD, in the stands beside me and said, “That girl is not going to let us lose this game.”

Sure enough, we converted our first kick, and their second kicker was either so nervous or so intimidated by Andrea’s first block that she wailed it way over the top of the goal.

We hit our second kick, and now it was 2-0. To top it off, Andrea blocked the third kick, too. She shut them out, and that just doesn’t happen in shootouts.

It darn near brought me to tears. It was as inspiring an athletic effort as I’ve been around. That was competitive greatness—coming through with your best effort and best performance when it is most needed.

Two days later, we won the championship over Rollins College in an almost anticlimactic game. Everybody knew the championship had been won when we needed competitive greatness. And a kid who had started on the club team delivered her best effort and performance when it was most needed.

I invited Andrea back to campus in late August 2015 to speak to our athletes during the annual Laker Pride and Tradition meeting. She spoke about what she did to prepare herself for moments like that. In essence, she said she tried to achieve competitive greatness every day by at least giving her best effort.

At some point, that best effort is going to translate to a best performance, and when the opportunity presents itself, you’ll already be accustomed to delivering your best effort.

Andrea Strauss was named Grand Valley State’s 2014-15 female scholar-athlete of the year. She graduated in four years with a degree in speech and language pathology, and she’s now in the master’s program at Wayne State (Michigan) in the same discipline, giving her best effort every day.

Thinking back on the soccer semifinal, I was as proud of her then as I was of Chris Penzien more than a decade earlier. I was even more proud of her as I listened to her speak to the next class of young men and women seeking competitive greatness.

It’s challenging and hard work being in athletics administration, but the rewards are high. This moment was one of them for me, to be sure.

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