Recovery means becoming someone you didn't know you could be. In high school, I was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Depression had hollowed out my sense of direction and substances filled the gap temporarily, destructively, and at a real cost to my future. I was not in a place where I could imagine college, a career, or a version of myself worth investing in. Recovery didn't happen because I figured it out on my own. It happened because I accepted help. That was the hardest part, admitting that I couldn't white-knuckle my way through it and letting people in. That willingness to be honest about my struggles, rather than performing like everything was fine, changed everything. To me recovery is not a finish line. It is a daily commitment to showing up as a better version of yourself than yesterday. It is staying humble enough to ask for help when you need it and honest enough to recognize when you're slipping. That lesson lives in everything I do now. In how I lead, how I coach, and why I am building programs for young people who need someone to show up for them the way people showed up for me.

There was a period in my life where I wasn't sure I wanted to be here anymore. Depression doesn't announce itself cleanly. It builds slowly, quietly, until the weight of it makes ordinary things feel impossible. I struggled for longer than I admitted to anyone, and at my lowest point I was dealing with thoughts of suicide that I didn't know how to talk about or escape from. I am sharing this not for sympathy, but because I think honesty about that darkness is the only way to explain what came after. Sport saved me. Specifically, rugby did. When I started playing rugby something shifted. It wasn't immediate and it wasn't magic, but for the first time in a long time I had a reason to show up somewhere, a team that expected me, and a physical outlet that burned through the weight I had been carrying. The sport demanded presence, you cannot be lost in your own head when someone is running at you full speed. My body started feeling like something to take care of rather than something to endure. That experience rewired how I understand the world. I no longer see sport as entertainment or exercise. I see it as infrastructure, a system that, when designed well, gives people belonging, purpose, and a reason to keep going. I also understand deeply that access to that system is not equal, and that the people who need it most are often the ones most likely to be pushed out of it. That is why my fellowship project at Linfield University focuses on keeping adolescent girls in sport. Research tells us girls drop out at alarming rates during adolescence, precisely the window when mental health challenges tend to emerge. I know from personal experience what it means to lose your footing during that period of life. I also know what it means to find it again through sport. Building programs that keep girls connected to that environment is not just an academic interest for me, it is personal in the most direct way possible. Mental health shaped my goals by showing me what is actually at stake. It shaped my relationships by teaching me that vulnerability builds more trust than performance ever could. And it shaped my understanding of the world by making clear that the systems we build around young people either protect them or fail them. I intend to spend my career building ones that protect them.

I almost didn't apply to college. My high school record wasn't something I was proud of. Inconsistent grades, a lack of direction, and an honest belief that academic success was something that happened to other people. I remember sitting with my high school counselor and genuinely wondering whether college was even a realistic path for me. I didn't test well, I struggled to stay engaged in traditional classroom settings, and I had watched peers who seemed effortlessly capable sail through coursework that left me feeling lost. I didn't see myself as someone who belonged in college, let alone someone who could thrive there. That self-doubt was the hardest thing I've ever had to overcome, and it followed me through my front door at Oregon State University Cascades. But I made a decision early on: I wasn't going to out-memorize anyone or out-test anyone. I was going to out-work them, and I was going to be creative about how I learned. I sought out professors during office hours, connected coursework to my real-world experiences in snow sports and adaptive athletics, and leaned into hands-on opportunities where I could demonstrate what I knew rather than just recite it. I stopped measuring myself against students who learned differently than me and started building study habits and approaches that actually worked for how my brain operates. There was no single moment where everything clicked — it was a slow accumulation of small wins that eventually added up to something I was proud of. Slowly, college started to feel like a place I belonged. That persistence paid off. I finished my undergraduate kinesiology degree at OSU Cascades with a 3.61 GPA and was honored with the Distinguished Student Award for the kinesiology program, recognition I genuinely did not see coming when I walked onto campus unsure if I was smart enough to be there. That award means more to me than any grade because it represents the distance I traveled, not just the destination. Outside the classroom, my experiences have consistently centered on service and community. I served as a Product Team Lead with SnoPlanks Academy, an OSU Cascades outdoor education program where I developed and managed snow sports programming at Mt. Bachelor. I volunteered as a coaching assistant with Oregon Adaptive Sports, working alongside athletes of all abilities in outdoor recreation settings. I also served on work crew with YoungLife at a Christian camp, an experience that deepened my commitment to showing up for others, doing the unglamorous work without recognition, and understanding that strong communities are built by people willing to serve behind the scenes. These experiences collectively shaped my belief that the best programs and organizations succeed because of the people invested in them, not just the systems around them. At Linfield, I am completing an MS in Business with a fellowship centered on reducing adolescent girls' dropout from organized sport. The project, Designing for Belonging, involves community needs assessments, stakeholder partnerships, and the development of an evidence-based program framework that schools and youth organizations can actually implement. The research behind this work is sobering. Girls drop out of sport at significantly higher rates than boys during the middle-to-high school transition, and the consequences extend well beyond athletics. Studies consistently link sport participation to better mental health outcomes, stronger academic performance, and greater confidence in adulthood. When girls leave sport, they lose more than a hobby — they lose a developmental environment that research shows is genuinely protective. My fellowship work begins with listening. Through surveys and interviews with local coaches, parents, athletes, and program directors, I am identifying the specific barriers girls face in my community rather than assuming national trends map perfectly onto local realities. From there I will evaluate existing evidence-based retention programs, synthesize what works, and build a framework that a real school, club, or youth organization can actually pick up and use. The goal is not a research paper that sits on a shelf. It is a practical implementation guide backed by community voice and grounded in sport leadership principles that center belonging over performance metrics. It is the most meaningful work I have done, and it sits at the intersection of everything I have built toward: kinesiology, leadership, business, and a deep commitment to making sport accessible for the people most likely to be pushed out of it. I didn't start as the obvious candidate for any of this. But I've learned that grit and creativity, paired with the right opportunities, can close a lot of gaps. This scholarship would be one of those opportunities and I won't waste it.

Building Belonging: A Future Rooted in Girls' Sport I want to build something that doesn't show up on a scoreboard. For years, research has told us the same story: girls drop out of organized sports at dramatically higher rates than boys during the middle-to-high school transition. The reasons are well-documented, social pressure, body image concerns, shifting peer dynamics, and sport environments that prioritize performance over people. We know the problem. What's missing is the infrastructure to fix it at the community level. That's what I'm building. Through my fellowship project at Linfield University, I am developing Designing for Belonging which is a sport leadership initiative built specifically to address adolescent girls' dropout from sport. The project begins with listening: conducting community needs assessments through surveys and interviews with coaches, parents, athletes, and program directors to understand the specific barriers girls face locally. From there, I will evaluate existing evidence-based retention programs, synthesize best practices, and design a replicable framework that any school, club, or youth organization could actually use. This isn't hypothetical work. The goal is a formal program proposal with concrete coaching strategies, mentorship structures, and inclusion-centered design principles, that a real partner organization can adopt and implement. I am actively building at least one community partnership to ground the project in genuine organizational need, not just academic theory. My path to this work runs directly through my undergraduate experience at Oregon State University Cascades. As a Product Team Lead with SnoPlanks Academy, I learned how to build programs from the ground up, managing logistics, coordinating teams, and designing participant experiences that actually worked in practice. As a volunteer with Oregon Adaptive Sports, I saw firsthand what happens when sport environments are intentionally designed for belonging: people show up, stay, and grow. Those two experiences planted a question I haven't stopped asking: why don't more sport spaces feel that way, especially for girls? The impact I'm building toward extends beyond any single program. When girls stay in sport, the research is clear: they report better mental health outcomes, stronger social connections, higher academic performance, and greater confidence carrying into adulthood. Dropout isn't just a sport statistic, it's a public health issue with decades-long consequences. Building a framework that communities can actually use to reverse that trend is, to me, one of the most meaningful things a sport and business professional can do. My MS in Business at Linfield is the vehicle. The fellowship is the foundation. And the community is the reason. I'm not just building a program. I'm building toward a future where belonging in sport is the rule, not the exception.