Spider Leadership Sprints into New Semester
09/07/2023 | General, Spider Leadership, Spider Performance
RICHMOND, Va. — Less than two weeks into the fall semester, Richmond Athletics leadership programming is already in championship form. Spider student-athletes have attended orientation fairs, red events, mental health check-ins, wellness programs, and even a ropes course challenge. But the highlight for many Spiders was the Spider Leadership Initiative's Leadership Kickoff Banquet, held the evening of August 29 in Tyler Haynes Commons.
The event included more than 100 student-athletes, coaches, staff members, President Kevin Hallock and his wife Tina, and guest of honor and keynote speaker Nikita Thomas, a 2010 Richmond graduate and former Spider Women's Basketball player who is now employed by the U.S. Secret Service on the agency's presidential protection detail.
The evening centered around the theme for this year's Leadership program, The Stonecutter's Credo by Jacob Riis, which reads:
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
Senior Associate AD for Leadership and Student-Athlete Development Lauren Wicklund, who oversaw the selection of the parable as the theme for this year's Spider Leadership Initiative, sees it as a simple message with a profound lesson.
"All that work is going to pay off, but it's not going to be easy. You're not necessarily going to realize it tomorrow," said Wicklund. "You're not going to see that progress in a day, but in the long term. So how you keep your motivation going?"
Wicklund feels that often, the best way to manage all the trials and tribulations of being a leading student-athlete at an academically rigorous institution is simple: "Keep going."
Thomas, who ascended to her current position with the federal government after years with the Richmond Police Department, is a testament how the determination and perseverance Spider student-athletes learn on campus can benefit them after graduation, according to Wicklund.
"She has gone through so much in her life, and she's had to work for every single thing she's got," said Wicklund. "It reminds [the student-athletes] that this work is going to pay off."
In between marks by Wicklund, President Hallock, and Thomas, attendees had dinner and dessert and participated in a "stone-cutting" activity to demonstrate the cumulative effect continued blows may have on a stone, in this instance represented by several piñatas.
See pictures from the event here.
The event included more than 100 student-athletes, coaches, staff members, President Kevin Hallock and his wife Tina, and guest of honor and keynote speaker Nikita Thomas, a 2010 Richmond graduate and former Spider Women's Basketball player who is now employed by the U.S. Secret Service on the agency's presidential protection detail.
The evening centered around the theme for this year's Leadership program, The Stonecutter's Credo by Jacob Riis, which reads:
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
Senior Associate AD for Leadership and Student-Athlete Development Lauren Wicklund, who oversaw the selection of the parable as the theme for this year's Spider Leadership Initiative, sees it as a simple message with a profound lesson.
"All that work is going to pay off, but it's not going to be easy. You're not necessarily going to realize it tomorrow," said Wicklund. "You're not going to see that progress in a day, but in the long term. So how you keep your motivation going?"
Wicklund feels that often, the best way to manage all the trials and tribulations of being a leading student-athlete at an academically rigorous institution is simple: "Keep going."
Thomas, who ascended to her current position with the federal government after years with the Richmond Police Department, is a testament how the determination and perseverance Spider student-athletes learn on campus can benefit them after graduation, according to Wicklund.
"She has gone through so much in her life, and she's had to work for every single thing she's got," said Wicklund. "It reminds [the student-athletes] that this work is going to pay off."
In between marks by Wicklund, President Hallock, and Thomas, attendees had dinner and dessert and participated in a "stone-cutting" activity to demonstrate the cumulative effect continued blows may have on a stone, in this instance represented by several piñatas.
See pictures from the event here.
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