Drake Made allows former student-athletes to, in their own words, describe how their experience as a student-athlete prepared them to excel in their postgraduate pursuits. From lessons learned in competition and the classroom, these Bulldogs examine and detail how Drake equipped them for future success and reflection upon those lessons learned.
In this Drake Made, Carly Grenfell outlines some of those behind the scenes lessons that prepared her for life after Drake. Grenfell was a member of the Drake women's basketball team from 2010-15. After a two-year graduate assistantship in athletic communications at Northern Arizona, Grenfell returned to her alma mater as the women's basketball director of operations for the 2016-17 season. Grenfell then accepted a position as a digital content specialist with the PGA of America and recently transitioned to a digital content editor with the PGA of America. While at Northern Arizona, Grenfell earned a summer internship with the LPGA, providing the experience and opening the door to her current role with the PGA of America.
Even though Drake University campus is no longer my physical home, it's a place that will always be and feel like home to me. I don't know a better way to describe my time as a student-athlete at Drake than it just being a really good story. There was the beginning, where I stepped foot on campus for the first time, and six months later, I was sidelined with a season-ending knee injury. The middle, where we probably weathered more storms than saw rainbows at the start of Coach Jennie Baranczyk's tenure, and the end where we felt something click and actually found ourselves as people, as a team and as a program.
It's truly a story that I will re-read over and over and over again, and feel nothing but gratitude each time. After I left Drake, I realized there are so many people who aren't living a very good story. They wake up everyday and just exist. They don't go the extra mile. They don't care about bettering themselves. They try to be someone they're not. They don't realize that we all have the chance to positively impact the people around us every single day by just being ourselves.
Although I'm not really sure I realized it at the time, my time as a student-athlete at Drake was the very start of me, and all of my teammates, never going down that path of mere existence. Drake was the beginning of understanding purpose and the big picture; that characters in a story are what they do - not what they think or say they are going to do. I couldn't be more proud of what we did as basketball players and as people at Drake. It wasn't always pretty at times, and definitely not perfect, but what good story doesn't have a little drama, or something to overcome, along the way? That is culture and that is a story I'll forever want to be a part of: failing together, succeeding together, impacting others together, and loving each other all the same through every peak and valley.
The culture I felt and was a part of at Drake is one I'll dance with forever. It is so easy to get bogged down in practices, classes, jobs or whatever it may be, but Drake women's basketball and Drake athletics taught me to show up. And not just show up to check a box or fill a cubicle, but to show up bigger - every day, every practice, every possession, every game and for every opportunity forward - and to do it for the people around you.
I'll end with a quote from one of my favorite books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller: "In order to make the story happen, we had to give it away, we had to ask for help, and when you are asking other people into the story with you, so it's no longer yours, it belongs to the community that believed in it with you. Great stories give life to greater stories. Here's to the hope the next one is yours." Thank you, Drake University, for being that community and family for me. My time at Drake really does belong to you.
Thank you for being lockstep on this journey with me. For understanding the time I completely blew off an assignment after tearing my ACL. For noticing what exhaustion looks like and giving me a few extra days to study for a test when I showed up to office hours looking like a hot mess. For cheering me on from the stands. For believing in me as a student, when I didn't really have the confidence myself. For never being upset that my only class attire was sweatpants or gym shorts and a t-shirt (accessorized with wet or sweaty hair). For equipping me with everything I could possibly need for a future where there's purpose and intention in every scene.
What I do know today is that it's never about the ending. My time at Drake has come and gone, but I will always hang on to the fact that I lived through something incredible - and came out on the other side a changed (for the better) and evolved human being. Crazily enough, it was all actually just the beginning. It's a story worth telling, and it's a story I probably won't ever put down.
Much love,
Carly
