Juniata is the perfect place to be a student-athlete! I have been on the cross country, indoor, and outdoor track teams here for all four of my years in college. Being an athlete here has helped me develop as a learner and as a runner. At JC, around 35% of the student body participates in a DIII Varsity sport. We have so many different teams from basketball to volleyball to track and cross country, which is what I do! There are lots of cool activities here to celebrate student-athletes and our accomplishments like DIII week and our Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Additionally, each individual teams have their own silly traditions.

On the cross country team, we show up a week early for preseason. This week is filled with different team bonding opportunities like going to the lake and going to the Meadows for ice cream. We also go to the local bowling alley and dress up in crazy clothes for the first Tuesday of preseason. The Holiday Bowl bowling alley has been supporting this crazy tradition for over a decade!

Once the season gets going and we start having races, we still maintain these goofy traditions with one of my favorites called Peace Run. Peace Run is when a woman on the team gets paired with a man on the team and we race each other around the track. Each team chooses a country to represent, we make t-shirts with that country’s flag on it, and then run our race. After the race, every team does a two-minute presentation about their country. The presentations range from fun facts to silly songs about the country. Peace Run is a really fun day of practice and definitely helps make our team more close-knit.

I have loved being on the cross country and track teams at Juniata. Being a student-athlete here allows me to balance my school work with something fun- athletics. Plus, having practice every day actually helps me be more productive and manage my time better. I am going to miss being on the teams here at JC!

-Alli Goulden ’19, Political Communication POE, fast running, hard working feminist