In November 2022, Whittier College announced it was cutting the football program along with men’s lacrosse and men’s and women ‘s golf, where, later this announcement will mark a dramatic reversal. Almost two years later, on October 25, 2024, the Whittier College Board of Trustees will announce its decision to bring back the football program for the 2026–2027 school year. For Vice President of Enrollment, Ken Woods, a six-foot-tall, white-haired alumnus from the class of 1984, who is known for driving around campus in a purple golf cart, the decision represents far more than the reinstatement of a sport. It’s an opportunity to rewrite the story of a campus known for both tradition and turbulence.

“When we had football on campus, it brought in about 100 student-athletes,” Woods said. “But it also brought diversity, student life, and energy. That is a huge positive for a campus of our size.”

Woods sees this moment through two lenses: as an alumnus who experienced the College’s athletic heyday in the 1980s, and as the administrator now given the task of rebuilding enrollment after some of the most difficult years in Whittier’s recent history. “We’re trying to grow,” he said plainly. “And bringing back football absolutely helps us get there.”

As the college is aiming for 450 to 500 new students per year, Woods sees football as a crucial ingredient in meeting that goal. For faculty and students alike, the return of the football season signals more than an enrollment boost, but it is also a factor in questions about the college’s identity, its campus life, and the community here at Whittier, where quiet weekends have become a defining characteristic.

“I saw football players helping other students move in, attending events, showing up at plays,” Woods said. “You can feel the shift. Campus feels alive again, and a lot of that comes from Coach White’s philosophy.”

“You can feel the shift. Campus feels alive again.”

Known for his strong discipline, academic-first approach, Head Coach Corey White was “hired after multiple candidates got interviewed for this position,” Woods explained.

Coach White’s plans for his athletes are already in place: 8 a.m. study hall sessions, organized weight-room training, and clear expectations for campus engagement, even though his players are not yet in season.

Woods explained that this speaks to establishing a student-athlete culture here. “Years ago, Whittier struggled with low GPAs and retention issues among athletes.” Now, he believes those concerns are already fading. “Corey is building a program where athletes are students first, and you can see the differences already.”

After the reinstatement of the program was announced, alumni moved quickly, raising substantial funds to support it. Prospective students and families have begun to call again. Transparency about past struggles, Woods said, is key to restoring faith. “The best way to overcome negativity is to be honest,” he said, “We talk about the rough times. We talk about where we were and where we’re going.”

Where Whittier is going, Woods believes, is towards growth. Last year’s incoming class included about 30 football players, many with strong academic records. “ A third of last year’s football class had about a 4.0 GPA,” he said. “We’re growing enrollment while keeping academic integrity, increasing diversity, and lowering discount rates. That is not easy, but we are doing all three.”

The college has already seen increased campus tour registrations from student-athletes interested in a revitalized program. As the football program started on its road back, Woods noticed that several high school coaches who had stopped recommending Whittier College were reaching out again. “The return of football is not just about wins and losses, but is also about restoring the pride and possibility across campus,” Woods said.

One of Whittier College’s longstanding challenges is the dearth of campus activities; it’s too quiet on weekends. This is different from how Woods remembers his college days. “When I was here in the 80s, this place was never quiet,” he said. “We went to every game together, football, basketball, and softball. Residence Halls organized outings. Activities were constant.”

Woods is realistic that football alone will not fix this issue, but he sees it as a powerful catalyst. “Coach White already has plans for every home game,” Woods said. “He understands the ‘hoopla’ of college sports and wants to bring that energy here.”

The administration’s broader goal is to achieve greater campus integration, including athletes attending theater productions, performing arts students supporting athletic events, and students from all majors participating in campus-wide activities. “The theater kids should be at the basketball games. The basketball teams should be at the theater production,” Woods said. “We are small enough that everyone can support everyone.”

Recent signs of life offer hope — packed women’s basketball games, kayaking trips organized by Professor Jonathan Burton, and student life outings to opera performances. “COVID changed students,” Woods reflected. ‘People forgot how to program, how to show up. Now we are relearning. And athletics can spark that.”

Not all students are convinced that restoring football will benefit everyone. Some still worry about funding, resources, or program cuts elsewhere. Woods is firm that football is not returning at the expense of anyone else. “We aren’t cutting programs to fund football,” he said. “That’s why alumni fundraising was essential.”

He sees football as a part of a larger expansion, not as a redistribution of resources. Sort of like an abundance-theory approach to the school’s future. The college is considering adding more sports while also strengthening the arts, which he describes as “central to campus vibrancy… How do we fully use the Shannon Center? This campus can be incredibly vibrant if we invest across the board,” he said.

“Coach White already has plans for every home game,” Woods said. “He understands the ‘hoopla’ of college sports and wants to bring that energy here.”

As the football program continues to grow for its upcoming 2026–2027 season, Wood has a few words of encouragement and asks for students, alumni, staff, and the Whittier community.

“Be present,” he said. “Come to the games. Get rowdy. Create energy. This is our moment to bring back spirit, not just for football, but for the whole campus and community.”

The administration hopes this revival will spark new traditions, strengthen school identity, and remind prospective students why small colleges can still offer big experiences. From its perspective, the return of the football program is not only about the wins and losses, but about showing that Whittier College has the opportunity and determination to write its story all over.

Will it mark a new start in Poet history? Stay tuned?

This is our moment to bring back spirit, not just for football, but for the whole campus and community.

The Abundance Theory Behind Football’s Second Act was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The sun is setting low on the Los Angeles skyline, setting the clouds and the tops of the palm trees ablaze in pink. Cars roar and rip past, the city in conversation with itself.

At a house on a hillside above the din, a glass door slides shut, muting the outside world as Lynn Smith, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) walks into the room. She’s dressed in a knitted white, floor-length sweater, her auburn hair wavy and wild after stepping in from the breezy patio. Smith’s eyes crinkle as a smile spreads across her face, setting the room at ease.

Therapy has changed significantly over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic shifting all manner of dare delivery to remote, what we call Telehealth, forcing caregivers such as Smith to adapt quickly.

“Initially, [the switch] was quite a shock. I never imagined doing therapy online. I thought that this was a real challenge,” Smith explains. “It happened very quickly, and as an EMDR therapist, the community of EMDR therapists responded to that bh developing methods of doing EMDR online, which was very rare and and, you know, not practiced regularly. We began to practice different methods of doing EMDR online, and software then later became developed to maximize that and is still used today as, you know, a method of providing EMDR via telehealth.”

EMDR is an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, a growing, cutting edge method of providing therapy, especially to those dealing with stress, anxiety and post-traumatic stress from past events.

“EMDR works by desensitizing traumatic memories,” Smith explains “Memory networks are comprised of emotions, images, beliefs about the self and body sensations. Like getting triggered: you feel it in your body. And the mind may be saying — this isn’t my fault. But why does it feel like it is? Because of maladaptive memory networks!”

To illustrate, Smith pulls up diagrams on her phone that represent the human brain and how trauma reprocessing looks on a cerebral level. “So, with EMDR, we have discovered through experience and research that eye movements and/or dual stimuli seem to help bypass the defenses and get to the root of the problem presented. So eye movement seems to simulate REM sleep: to help reconsolidate those memories that come with a high emotional charge. Sending them back to the longterm storage memory networks with corrective — adaptive information,” Smith says.

Smith was drawn to EMDR by her own experiences with trauma. “I had worked on a significant trauma from childhood in my first training. I thought it was done because I had ‘talked’ through it. But when activated, I felt it again. Not as terrible as it was before, but it was still there. And I could see where it showed up in my life, how it was getting triggered by smells, and visually when I saw the place where it happened.”

After a series of EMDR treatments, Smith was convinced. “When I finished that first weekend? I was a believer. Because the triggers no longer caused those body sensations. It’s like the mind and body are now in sync and know: that it’s [the traumatic event] over,” Smith says.

When discussing what led her to this field, Smith pauses to sip her tea, starting and stopping a couple times before finding the right words.

“My deepest passion is to do this kind of work — to share the knowledge and power of EMDR to relieve the suffering caused by our crazy world.”

“When I was a young child, my mother struggled with depression and anxiety. I used to coach her through panic attacks when I was a kid,” Smith says. “I always had a passion for social justice, which was why I wanted to be a lawyer.”

Before she went into clinical social work, Smith had been on the path to becoming a lawyer. “Part of that was because my mom was always super supportive of me getting my own career and doing things differently than she did,” explains Smith. “She wanted me to know that I could be strong and independent. Even though she wasn’t well the majority of my life, she gave me that gift of believing I was strong and could do it. So, I chose law, because I thought that was the way to go.”

Her path changed in her senior year of undergrad — she got a job as a social worker, and began working towards getting her master’s degree in social work.

“I applied, I got in, and [when] I started the program I realized that this was really what I wanted to do. This really fit what I wanted in terms of the same kind of social justice and helping others that I had originally sought out in the law degree, but this was a much better fit for me,” Smith says. “My deepest passion is to do this kind of work — to share the knowledge and power of EMDR to relieve the suffering caused by our crazy world.”

Smith’s brother, whom she describes as autistic, dealt with a lot of the suffering. Her parents, whom Smith says were typical of the self-obsessed 80s, “missed some big pieces with [my brother],” who spent a great deal of his adult life homeless.

“My father was very critical, and at times very harsh verbally. So I knew I had to figure out how to understand my own experience, and overcome all of the dysfunction,” she says. “I saw a therapist at age 18 and got my shit together!”

Of her volatile upbringing , Smith says, “I survived. It really wasn’t my fault — I was just a child. The body knows…[It’s possible] to heal ourselves, essentially, with our own brains. It’s innate. The body knows how to heal and so does the brain. It’s survival, and it’s wired within us.”

Despite her past trauma, Smith is by all appearances ensconced in a successful adulthood. Shit still happens, though, and the work never stops. So, she is also her own client. “I can make better decisions when I’m a healthy person. And I believe that I can handle this!” Smith says with a smile.

“Evidence based practice is where we are going in the future,” Smith says.“So, looking at therapies like EMDR, and other types of therapies that are well-researched and scientifically proven to be effective, are the future of this therapy.”

“The body knows how to heal and so does the brain. It’s survival, and it’s wired within us.”

The Body Knows The Score was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

T his past May, after five years of revolving doors and interim personnel, Whittier College announced that Vanessa Gonzalez would be the new Clery and Title IX Coordinator. Gonzalez has been part of the Whittier College community for four years, starting with her leadership role at the Department of Campus Safety in the Spring of 2021.

Gonzalez worked with the previous Clery Coordinator as Corporal of Safety and Compliance and grew familiar with the policy and procedure through administrative work and first-responder experience. She also found herself working closely with John LeJay II, who stepped down from his role as Associate Dean of Title IX and Bias in October of 2024, when Gonzalez processed Title IX and Clery incidents that Campus Safety responded to.

Students, faculty, and staff are hopeful Gonzalez will bring some stability to a critical campus role. Take, for example, the multiple students living in a campus dorm in November 2024 who filed a Title IX case against a fellow resident. Full disclosure: as their resident advisor, I was caught in the crossfire and supported them by taking them to the Title IX office and the Police Station. At the time, the case was being overseen by the Title IX coordinator, who was not available in person and could only be reached via email or Zoom. Administrative support came in the form of staff in the Dean of Students office, such as Conduct and Residential Life, but there was no Title IX and Clery coordinator on campus to talk with.

There is now.

A Title IX case starts with a complainant filing a case against a respondent. The complainant can then decide if they want to pursue a formal or informal process, meaning a full investigation can be pursued — which can take months — or the complainant can resolve the case with a structured interaction with the respondent. Briefly, a Formal Grievance Complaint (a formal investigation) involves testimony, witnesses, cross-examinations, and a final hearing with a decision-maker. The Whittier College website describes over 30 phases of the investigation process in detail.

Over the last four years, students have seen the Title IX coordinator role change hands four times. Administrative roles change regularly, but a role that is central to emotionally weighted problems, such as sexual assault and discrimination, can make or break a student’s undergraduate experience.

Students may remember John LeJay, II, who stepped down from his role as Associate Dean of Title IX and Bias in October of 2024. Before LeJay, Lafayette Baker served as the Title IX Coordinator in the Dean of Students’ office under then Vice President Deanna Merino-Contino (now Associate VP of Student Life at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas) from the fall of 2021 until LeJay took over.

LeJay was well-known around campus for his dedication to student life and involvement with affinity groups like the Black Student Association. At his new institution, College of the Canyons, LeJay laments the distance between the Title IX office and the student body.

“The students are kept away; it’s all cases with no faces,” he sighed over Zoom.

Just before Merino-Contino stepped down in June 2023, the Dean of Students’ office dedicated its efforts to increasing student awareness of the Title IX office in hopes of furthering a culture of self-advocacy on campus. LeJay argued that a lack of resources could lead to long-term trauma if students don’t have the tools to learn how to advocate for themselves in a professional setting.

LeJay implemented structural changes to demystify the Title IX office and give students more ways to engage with the Title IX process. He introduced more training to faculty and staff, and implemented the Bias Team for identity-based discrimination investigations. Merino-Continto and LeJay created a network of Title IX advisors in 2022 for students to pull from, which was an important step in departmental improvements.

He is seen as instrumental in creating a campus-wide understanding of what Title IX is. “It [did] nothing for me to be the sole person that knew about Title IX then,” LeJay laughs.

LeJay stepped down in October of 2024 after contract negotiations with the current administration did not meet his needs.

In transitional periods such as the following, LeJay’s departure and before Gonzalez’s appointment, there was no designated person to talk to when students had Title IX concerns, sometimes leaving students and their cases feeling like they were in limbo.

“It [did] nothing for me to be the sole person that knew about Title IX then.”

T itle IX Advisor is an official role described by Title IX Solutions, Whittier College’s main provider of Title IX training and consulting. Cases are adjudicated on campus by the coordinator. An advisor serves as a pre-hearing and post-hearing support who attends investigation meetings with a student and can connect students to wellness resources.

Francisco Gomez, the Director of the Office of Inclusive Excellence, is currently the longest-serving Title IX Advisor in the department. He became an Advisor in 2022 and continues to help students navigate the Title IX process today. Gomez served as the only Title IX Advisor for the 2022–2023 school year, before the network of advisors continued to grow with LeJay and Merino-Contino’s efforts.

Whittier College offers a small, tight-knit community among students, faculty, and staff. Many students have a rapport with a faculty member who also serves as an official Title IX advisor, and dozens more share a similar bond with staff who serve as colleagues and supervisors in Student Life Departments.

One of the main issues in the frequent turnover in the coordinator’s role is the changing of priorities in how to handle ongoing cases in the Title IX office. Dr Mikiba Morehead was the Title IX Office’s consultant through TNG Consulting since 2022 and was promoted to Interim Coordinator for the 2024–2025 academic year after LeJay’s departure. Dr Morehead was based in Washington, D.C. and was an asynchronous presence when handling the Title IX Cases she inherited during this period.

Transitional periods can leave students searching for support in advisors or feeling unfamiliar with staff in the Title IX office. Even though advisors have basic Title IX training, they do not have the authority to make any decisions about the investigation and are functionally there for emotional support and advocacy.

With so much turnover in the Title IX Coordinator role, students have trouble keeping up with the central figure who actually oversees their cases. As their residential advisor, I was in a position of trying to support the students who filed the case last November, but felt a little inadequate without being able to direct students to an on-campus Title IX coordinator.

As my residents twisted in the wind, the college was still trying to sort out the position after LeJay’s departure. Even with the advisor model that students have in place to help during such transitions, students sometimes felt underserved.

A student who will remain anonymous filed a formal Title IX investigation days after LeJay’s departure.

“In the beginning, it was cool to chat over Zoom [with Dr Morehead], but even then, I felt disconnected,” a student who filed a formal Title IX complaint days after LeJay’s departure explained. “My frustrations go to the school because why was there no Title IX coordinator in person, as if this weren’t a college… Dealing with Title IX and the situation itself, I can truly say I’ve never felt more isolated and stupid.”

This student felt that their case was not sufficiently resolved and ended up filing a no-contact order that they say was repeatedly violated before the Dean of Students Office had to intervene.

Students can feel discouraged by this isolation and may abandon the investigation altogether if they do not see progress or action being taken. Although these investigations can take months and involve tedious cross-examinations, a visible and present coordinator on campus would provide a readily accessible place to check in on the progress of cases.

Enter Vanessa Gonzalez.

Gonzalez earned her Master's Degree in Criminal Justice in December of 2024. Upon LeJay’s departure, she approached the Dean of Students Administrators to fill the position. She was warned about the emotional and mental toll of handling Title IX cases.

“They did recommend me to start looking into what [the position] actually entails, because you can’t speak to anybody about cases the same way you would talk to your coworkers,” she says.

Given her prior role with Campus Safety, Gonzalez felt prepared for the weight of the role, and she is already a familiar face to students. She was introduced as the new Title IX and Clery Coordinator to student leadership teams like the Residential Advisors when she began her new role in May of 2025.

She also finds the network of trained faculty and staff to be an indispensable support system. The Interim Coordinator, Dr Morehead, walked Gonzalez through the onboarding process over the summer when Gonzalez inherited active cases.

“The members [of faculty and staff] that I have interacted with have all been supportive, and there’s an aspect that they don’t question me or make me feel like I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Gonzalez.

“The members [of faculty and staff] that I have interacted with have all been supportive.”

This past August, Conduct Coordinator Christina Nevaja departed, leaving the role to be handled by the Dean of Students' office. Students have been watching turnover in these sensitive roles, especially figures who built strong connections with the community on campus. The same is to say, more stability is being welcomed.

“It’s hard when there’s a lot of transitions, especially in higher roles,” Gonzalez says. Because Coordinators work closely with Advisors and other offices, they inherit highly confidential information. The transfer of this sensitive knowledge, limited to only a few staff, caused friction during previous handovers.

So far, the transition into the role has been smooth for Gonzalez, and she has been making efforts towards participating in Student Life events like Denim Day in the spring.

Having someone on campus in a permanent role, at least for now, presents an opportunity to build stronger relationships between students and the Title IX office.

A Revolving Door No More was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Tove Karlsson

The Whittier College Counseling Center located is perched at the crest of top of a hill on Philadelphia Street, with a view of the dorms and lecture halls below. It seems purposely placed for it to be far enough away from the busy campus to feel more calm, but also close so that students can easily walk in from their dorm rooms or classes.

The Center, a cottage-style building with a vibrant butterfly painting on the wall, looks like someone’s house at first sight and you might walk right by it if you didn’t know better. Inside, the waiting room dosen’t really give the vibes off a doctor’s office. It feels more like stepping into someone’s actual cluttered living room. As soon as you enter, though, a woman asks how she can help.

That’s a good question and it’s one campus counseling centers across the country have been struggling to keep up with, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Not that it was much easier before. As Rebecca Eberle-Romberger, Assistant Vice-President of Student Wellness and Psychologist/Director at Whittier College, explains it, mental-health needs among students were already outpacing available resources before the pandemic. Since then, the gap has widened even more.

Romberger notes that while the 2020–21 quarantine years did lead to a decrease in alcohol and drug consumption among college-aged individual, the lock downs impaired development of social skills, increasing the prevalence of social anxiety when students eventually returned to college campuses.

“By the time we got away from the pandemic restrictions, social anxiety was growing and it became the number one presenting concern in college counseling centers across the nation,” Romberger explains.

In fact, says Romberger, the mental-health effects of the pandemic, especially on college students, is still echoing across the years. Since returning to campus in person in the fall of 2021 (January term 2022 classes were cancelled) students seem to have more social anxiety as well as overall anxiety, relational concerns, and depression.

The particular reasons for these types of issues have a strong connection to the pandemic, but the current political environment and also the climate issues are systemic stressors. Romberger adds that the Counseling Center has also seen more students presenting with related financial concerns, which often leads to students working multiple jobs both on and off campus, which in turn impacts their academic performance, social engagement and overall wellness.

Looking at it more nationally, Whittier College seems to mirror the national trends of the U.S., but with an exception that students at Whittier College are more diverse and may face more sociopolitical and financial challenges, which may be demonstrated in trauma responses. The top three presenting concerns in the country at college mental health centers are social anxiety, anxiety and depression.

For the Counseling Center at Whittier College there tends to be a higher demand from first-years and graduating seniors seeking support. For the first-years it’s about facing adjustment issues in the fall term, and for seniors it’s in spring term as they prepare to launch from campus and into their next chapter in life.

Some mental-health services and programs that are offered by Whittier College are the TalkCampus App which is an App through which students all over the world can talk to each other and chat about different types of problems or mental health struggles. The college also has Let’s Talk, which is a virtual and an in-person option for mental health consultations. Uwill is a platform primarily for students to acess help from licensed therapists via video or chat. Flyers and signboards across campus highlight these resources, underscoring the college’s effort to increase visibility and encourage students to seek help.

Romberger explains that there are barriers that keep students from seeking counseling or even using available support services are often stigma around mental health, which can stem from familial, cultural, or faith/religious cultures. These have been the primary reasons for students to not seek counseling and instead hesitating to utilize the services that are provided. If there is a silver lining to the pandemic era, it’s that some of these barriers have receded. “After the pandemic the stigma has decreased significantly,” Romberger said.

The Counseling Center is often referred to by faculty members to students if they believe the person is in immediate danger or crisis or if they are highly distressed. There are also staff and other students that report concerning behaviors, basic need challenges or mental health concerns through the CARE program, which is The Whittier Affirmation, Resilience, Empowerment Program that is a collaborative team approach comprised of faculty and staff working on community safety and well-being. On campus, the Counseling Center offers and encourages faculty and staff to complete Question, Persuade, Refer, a certificate to prepare them on how to address suicidal crisis, which they also encourage students to do and it is also free to do it.

In his book The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that excessive digital exposure with an average of more than eight hours a day, has been contributing to rising rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among teens, and especially among girls. Haidt argues that teen’s intense online use — about 46 percent are online constantly with an average over eight hours a day — is a key factor for the declining mental health.

The post-pandemic rise in the use of social media and digital platforms, exacerbated by AI, is a nationwide, even worldwide, challenge. Australia just this week put into an effect a ban on social media for anyone under 16 years of age.

Whittier College plans to continue to adapt to the increasing mental-health needs of students now and in the future. “Our Student Life team has identified outcomes in the areas of engagement, diversity, inclusion, and wellness to build programming upon,” Romberger said.

There is also additional outside funding through grants from the UniHealth Foundation, which helped and allowed Whittier College to expand their peer health education program. The college expexts a Wellness Plan to roll out formally in Fall 2026.

Romberger would like to see additional funding to expand staff. “It would be great to see student clubs and organizations integrate wellness into their activities,” Romberger says.

“My mental health was so bad that my friends more or less forced me to go,” says a second-year student at Whittier College who requested to remain anonymous.

The student says the Counseling Center’s staff was welcoming, even though the overall experience was difficult due to the student having never been to the center before. The second-year said the staff “seemed to know what they were doing” and didn’t force them to say thing before they were ready to.

The student believes other students are facing similair challenges due to College being stressful as it is, and on top of that are a lot of other stuff to balance in life. “Friends can only do so much but they are not professionals, and it can also affect their well being as well,” the student said.

Though the student said there was a little bit of hesitation to go to the center, it’s easier to seek help nowadays as stigmas around doing so are fading. But they are not gone. People still joke about the Counseling Center without realizing it could actually benefit everyone by seeking help by professionals, according to the student.

Romberger said there is a need to hear from students, staff, and faculty for her and her staff. “Everyone’s voice matters,” she emphasized.

“Everyone’s voice matters”.

As the formal Wellness Plan is getting ready to roll out in fall 2026, Whittier College Counseling Center continues to adapt to the increasing number of students seeking help, everything from financial stress to social anxiety. Romberger keeps hoping for more fundings and a wider involvement around campus which potentially could help expand services and plant wellness into student life more.

Under Pressure was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s around 9:00 PM and you can feel the difference on campus compared to when the sun is out and classes are in session. The daytime bustle has died down to scattered footsteps of students heading back to their dorms. The green quads and Spanish Colonial Revival buildings are black silhouettes in the night, blending into the backdrop of hills and walkways.

Everything seems to fall into a hush until the distant hum of a golf cart breaks the silence. A Campus Safety patrol is driving up the path, circling the campus as the headlights bleed into the path and the patrol begin its graveyard shift.

After the routine of checking up on entrances, parking lots, and the dark edges of the academic buildings, the officers then turn their attention to call boxes scattered across the campus. Each one has to be checked manually every night, making sure that the light works, the button responds, and that no student is left without assistance if it’s needed.

To students, the callboxes are just lights in the corner of their eye, but to the campus safety officers and medical patrol, they are essential checkpoints, small reminders that students can call in whenever they feel unsafe, and that it doesn’t just have to be on a phone call.

“It’s always patrol duty for officers,” stated Rolando Fuentes, captain of the Department of Campus Safety. “Students can call the dispatch service whenever they need to, either on the phone or using a callbox.”

Fuentes explained the process of how a campus emergency is handled. Different emergencies require different responses, and nighttime incidents demand more caution. “If a student calls dispatch, we immediately respond and ask for details. Whether it’s emotional or physical. It’s important to know so we can send the correct help for that student,” Fuentes said.

Whittier College Campus safety is responsible for securing more than 75 acres of a hilly, shadow-heavy campus for nearly 1000 students plus faculty and staff. During the day, the openness feels inviting, but once the sun sets and the lights dim, the open campus and easy access becomes more noticeable. The open nature of the campus can fuel student anxieties about how safe the campus truly is after dark.

Depending on their shift, about 4–5 officers patrol the campus 24 hours, seven days a week, performing a wide range of safety and security duties on property that is owned and operated by the college. According to the Whittier College website, complaints, including anonymous ones, are investigated by the department. Those who file complaints can request confidentiality and choose how involved they would want to be in any subsequent investigation.

The policies listed on the website only reveal one side of the story. In order to understand the full picture, it’s helpful to see what the night patrol actually looks like.

During an evening ride along, the lack of lighting becomes more obvious as soon as the sun goes down. Pools of brightness appear under the lamp posts and ground lights, but wide shadows darken the space between the buildings. It’s these between spaces such as stairwells, narrow walkways, the stretches of grass between the science buildings, that students say their anxiety rises the most.

“I don’t feel safe on campus at night. It’s the time where I don’t leave my dorm,” ays Sara, a first year who just started dorming at Whittier College.

Many students describe Campus Safety as polite and responsive when called, yet they express that their overall visibility on campus is too lacking in order to feel truly safe. “They’re helpful,” Sara added. “But it would be more helpful if they were stationed more where we can see.”

Other students have raised more concerns about how open the campus is, with no gates and few checkpoints, making it possible for nearly anyone to walk in after dark.

“Really anyone can come onto campus. It’s hard to tell who’s a student and who’s not,” said Lisa, another first year student. “More lights would be appreciated so people know Campus Safety is around,” Lisa added

For officers however, visibility is often tied to focusing on rotating shifts and sometimes even limited staff. On a typical night, a handful of officers are covering the entire campus. Their routine includes rotating between parking lots, academic buildings, dorm communities, and perimeter checks.

They also respond to calls that range from complaints to wellness checks, providing occassional medical attention, and making students feel protected if they see suspicious individuals. Fuentes himself explained that Whittier College cares deeply about how students feel and added some measures to help them feel safer on campus.

“Overall I feel like the campus is pretty safe. Different students have different feelings of anxiety, but at the end of the day, if they need to, they can always call us,” he said. “It’s what we’re here for. We also added more lights around campus so hopefully that can ease some stress.”

Observing campus safety officers doing their patrols and talking with the Captain reveals a sense of trust from students but also some anxiety, especially from first year students traveling far from home in order to dorm and get adjusted.

Campus Safety often emphasizes that students have multiple contact resources and access to officer escorts. Officers remain on constant patrol, switching shifts and adjusting routes depending on needs. Although with limited staff and time, certain areas of the campus end up receiving less consistent visibility than others.

Even students who worry, say that they trust Campus Safety at the end of the day in a time of need. “I see their efforts,” Sara said. “They are still reliable and I would come to them in case of an emergency.”

For now, the conversation around night safety at Whittier college is a mix between anxiety, and appreciation. Students recognize the efforts as well as the limitations. They see potential for improvement whether it would be a stronger sense of presence and perhaps additional staff.

As a golf cart passes by the library and headlight sweeps across the brick walkway, the campus feels watched, even protected. But when the cart moves along, the shadows return.

Campus Safety At Night was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last winter, Whittier College’s men’s basketball team finished fourth in the league, and while it wasn’t a championship run, it was one of their best seasons in recent years. Now, with their star player gone, the Poets are heading into a season full of questions. For one returning teammate, and one newcomer, it’s less about looking back at what they lost and more about looking forward at what can be gained. Proving they can step up to bigger roles and show that Whittier’s success doesn’t depend on just one star.

“Three pointer, BANG! The Regals win it!”

Heartbreak. Standing in disbelief, the Poets watched Cal Lutheran’s gym erupt after a game-winning three pointer as the buzzer sounded. It was a hard way to watch their impressive season come to an end. Whittier went 18–9 overall and 10–6 in conference play. It was the program’s first winning season in almost a decade, and their most wins in a season since the 2011–12' campaign. All season, they put on an offensive clinic, averaging 88 points per game as a team. For the Poets, that taste of success was proof that they can compete.

The basketball team’s resurgence didn’t happen overnight. Under head coach Mark Jensen, the Poets have leaned into a fast-paced style of play that has earned dividends. As junior transfer Peyton Guerrero put it, “Whittier plays a lot faster than any team I’ve ever played for.”

That quick style of play reflects the grit-and-hustle culture Jensen is building. Averaging 88 points per game last season wasn’t just a stat, it was a statement. In a talented conference often defined by its defense, Whittier showed they could win by pushing the tempo and trusting their shooters. That identity now faces its biggest test without their former star, Aamari Smith, but Jensen’s rapid system is designed to thrive on depth, not just one player.

Last season was a historic one for the senior guard who led all of division III in scoring at 28.1 points per game. Smith was a first team all-conference player while also being Whittier’s first Jostens Trophy finalist, awarded to the most outstanding Division III basketball player of the year. Smith has continued his basketball journey and is currently playing overseas in Spain.

With Smith graduated, the Poets face the challenge of filling the void left by one of the most dominant scorers in the nation. Along with Smith, the Poets had six other seniors graduate. So, while they know they can’t replace Smith’s numbers, filling in the roles of seven seniors will be a challenge. The team will need returning veterans and new faces to step up into bigger roles and shine in Jensen’s system.

“Whittier plays a lot faster than any team I’ve ever played for.”

For returner Koleton Fenton, last year’s run was both motivation and a reminder of what’s possible. “The success from last year just shows that when we lock in and compete as a team, we can go head-to-head with anyone,” said Fenton, a 6'6 sophomore from Walnut Creek, California. He believes the team has been disrespected in this year's pre-season conference rankings, with the Poets being predicted to finish seventh in SCIAC play. “Going into this season our mindset is hungrier, and we feel we have more to prove being ranked so low,” said Fenton.

This year, the Poets are looking to build a strong connection off the floor, too. “This year’s team feels more connected. Last season we were talented but still learning one another,” Fenton said. “Now the chemistry is stronger after the work we put in together over summer, communication is better, and guys genuinely trust each other on and off the court.”

For a team that lost seven seniors, the trust factor that the Poets are building will be critical for success not only on the floor, but beyond basketball.

“The success from last year just shows that when we lock in and compete as a team, we can go head-to-head with anyone.”

Stepping into new roles has become the theme for this year’s Poets.

With senior losses, every player knows that if they want to succeed, it will depend on contributions from the entire roster. Newcomer Peyton Guerrero brings confidence from his junior college experience. “I think my past college basketball experience makes me confident that I will have an immediate impact on the team,” he said. “I believe my role will be to bring some scoring off of the bench and some defensive grit as well.”

Guerrero’s readiness reflects the responsibility shift that defines this season. Fenton echoes that, noting that the team’s strength will come from depth rather than one star. “I think with the loss of Aamari our whole team knows it's going to take consistent dedication and constant production from more guys than last year,” he said. “When it comes to roles, coach Jensen did a great job of building around us returners by recruiting guys to fill in the gaps. A huge piece of that is the addition of combo guard JD.”

Jonathan Duley “JD”, is a 6' 2" junior guard who transferred from Cuyamaca College after previously competing at Menlo College. Duley is averaging 20.2 points a game through the first six games of the season. We know it is going to take a collective group, but if the Poets are going to have someone replicate what Smith did last year, it’s going be Duley.

“I think with the loss of Aamari our whole team knows it’s going to take consistent dedication and constant production from more guys than last year.”

The Poets are going to face some challenges this year, as every team does. The biggest one will be avoiding injuries as the team’s game plan relies on putting constant pressure on opponents. “The biggest challenge for us this year is going to be staying healthy because as a team we know when we are at our best we can compete with any team we will face,” said Fenton.

This matters even more so now, because with the new faces, the lineup may be thinner as coach Jensen has not seen many guys play in big time games yet.

Another challenge is that new additions to the team have to wait for opportunities to prove themselves, which requires patience. “I think as a newcomer I will have to work harder,” said Guerrero. “I am excited to play at the D3 level and am motivated to prove my coaches that I belong and should be playing on that court.”

“I am excited to play at the D3 level and am motivated to prove my coaches that I belong and should be playing on that court.”

Whittier enters this season with questions, but also with hunger and belief. Between returning players stepping into leaderships roles and newcomers wanting to prove themselves, the Poets are determined to show the SCIAC that last year was only the beginning. A “Poet,” as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “a maker of verses; one of great imaginative and expressive capabilities.”

So, the question is, what verse will Whittier Men’s Basketball Team deliver in 2025–26'?

Writing the Next Verse was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Getting injured is stressful for college athletes. It’s especially for international student-athletes who, unlike their domestic counterparts, are unfamiliar with the environment, the healthcare system, and may not have family close enough to call. For them, an injury can be more than a physical setback.

Moving abroad at eighteen already requires a level of independence that most students don’t usually develop until much later. It means adapting to a new academic setting, a new language, and having to figure everything out from scratch. But when an injury occurs, the distance from home becomes even longer, and the maze of healthcare and insurance becomes even more complicated to navigate.

Zaid Poulsen-Hansen is an first-year international student from Denmark is a freshman who plays for the Whittier College men’s soccer team. At the beginning of the 2025 season, he suffered a knee injury that kept him sidelined for a significant part of the season. Fortunately, he explained, the support from his trainer was a major factor in his successful recovery. “I received very good support from our athletic training staff, who helped me and supported me throughout the injury. This definitely helped me in the recovery.”

The first point of contact for most injured athletes on campus is the athletic training room (ATR). The athletic trainer’s role includes evaluation, treatment, guiding the student-athlete through the rehabilitation process. Janett Reyes, the Assistant Athletic Trainer at Whittier College, explains her role as follows: “As an athletic trainer, it’s my responsibility to evaluate the injury, create a rehabilitation program, and make sure our student-athletes feel ready and safe to participate in their sport.”

An injury is more than just the visible scratch or bruise, and therefore Reyes always checks in on her athletes overall well being. “I always ask how they are doing both mentally and physically,” she says.

But once the injury requires medical care off campus, the situation changes quickly. According to Reyes, the difference between domestic and international students becomes obvious here: “The only difference is when dealing with medical insurance. Other than that, everything else is the same.”

On the other hand, that “only difference” is often the largest hurdle to jump.

“As an athletic trainer, it’s my responsibility to evaluate the injury, create a rehabilitation program, and make sure our student-athletes feel ready and safe to participate in their sport.”

Gerardo Velasco Manjarrez is the International Student Advisor at Whittier College, and he sees the confusion of students trying to navigate healthcare on their own. Supporting students with immigration paperwork is his primary role, but international athletes struggling with healthcare often show up at his door as well. “My main role in that support is with their immigration needs,” Velasquez Manjarrez explained, “however, I can gladly try helping in any other ways if needed.”

When an international student-athlete asks how insurance works, Velasco Manjarrez redirects them to the Business Office, which handles Whittier College’s health insurance plan that every international student-athlete must have. “I direct them to the Business Office, because this office is the one in charge of the health insurance, but if I can help, I will always try.”

Even with support from multiple offices, the insurance plan remains confusing. Velasco Manjarrez explained the main challenge: “The U.S. health system is a very difficult system to navigate, not only for international students, but also for U.S. citizens.”

“The U.S. health system is a very difficult system to navigate, not only for international students, but also for U.S. citizens.”

Understanding what is covered by insurance, which doctor students can see, whether they need a referral, and how to schedule appointments becomes a series of steps that feel scary and unfamiliar for international students. While domestic students might ask their parents what to do, international students often don’t have that option. Many don’t want to worry their families back home, and even if they ask, the parents may not know either because they’ve never lived here.

Sophomore Mikael Naesheim came all the way from Norway last year to represent the men’s soccer team here at Whittier. During his freshman year he broke his collarbone and had to undergo surgery. He said that being injured almost made him feel like he wasn’t a part of the team anymore, while having to face challenges on his own. Homesickness also grew stronger during this time, and he realized he had to solve the issues on his own. “I didn’t know what I was doing with all the insurance stuff, and had many unnecessary appointments at the doctor before surgery.”

Naesheim speaks positively about the support he received during his time of injury, both from his teammates, but also from coaches and staff, “Everybody was helpful and understanding,” he said.

On the other hand, neither his teammates nor the staff could tell him what he should and shouldn’t do with his insurance and doctor’s appointments. “(I) don’t know how it would work practically, but someone employed to help out with all the small questions along the way with insurance, medical visits etc.,” is what Naesheim discusses as an improvement regarding the support for the international athletes.

Spending many hours on the phone with the student insurance provider is not unusual for injured student-athletes. When questions concern the mandatory student-athlete insurance that Whittier College collaborates with, there is often no one to answer them. Velasco Manjarrez identified that gap. “Whittier doesn’t have a dedicated office for health insurance,” he said. “Maybe other schools have a specific department that only handles health insurance,” he said. “That would be very helpful.”

Velasco Manjarrez emphasized that the Office of International Programs wants to help. “My door is always open. It’s just a matter of making yourself available for students.” But he also admitted that the system can be confusing for employees as well as students, and that they wouldn’t neglect to help, but it’s more that they don’t understand the health insurance system themselves

Another complication the athletic trainer Reyes sees is that the international athletes sometimes choose to fly home for further assistance. “Some international student-athletes prefer to see or be treated by their physician back home,” she said. Healthcare might be cheaper where they come from, and furthermore, their family members can help them during recovery.

Reyes also acknowledges that transportation to the hospital is a major challenge for international student-athletes, because not many of them have cars here and must rely on teammates or pay for an Uber. “One resource that would be very helpful and essential is to create a program like Uber/Lyft.”

.

“My door is always open. It’s just a matter of making yourself available for students.”

Eventually, most international athletes learn how the system works, simply because they have to. They figure out who to email, what to bring to appointments, and how to ask the right questions in order for them to get the help they need. But that learning curve is steep, and many feel like they’re teaching themselves in real time while their injury is still healing, and the bills keep coming in the mail.

Injuries are inevitable in sports, but navigating them as an international student shows far more than physical vulnerability. It exposes how small problems, such as unclear communication or lack of transportation, can grow into large obstacles, and it highlights how much weight falls on the students themselves while still balancing schoolwork and rehabilitation. They need to figure out a healthcare landscape that even adults who have lived in this country for a long time admit is confusing.

For Poulsen-Hansen, being on an athletic team was one reason why he wanted to attend Whittier, while academics were the other. He explains that it wasn’t only the physical inability to play or practice, but the mental toll of his injury was significant as well. “Academically, the injury affected me since I now had to balance attending practice, lift, games, and now also rehab, on top of all this,” he explained. “This resulted in having less time during the days to also focus on academics.”

In the future, he wishes that there would be more staff in the ATR to take care of the large number of athletes at the school, and also immediate clarity so the athlete knows what to expect. “When the injury happens, take a meeting with the athlete to discuss how to best prepare for the next parts of being injured, providing the right resources and information to deal with the injury mentally, physically, and academically. Also give clear information about the process and what the athlete needs to know.”

“Academically, the injury affected me since I now had to balance attending practice, lift, games, and now also rehab, on top of all this. This resulted in having less time during the days to also focus on academics.”

Hurt And Alone was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Brandon Diaz

The use of AI in classrooms is at an all-time high. With the convenience of generative AI at students’ fingertips, professors and students are having to adapt to this new era of education that brings with it a new set of challenges, like trying to draw the line between when AI is useful as a tool and when it is being used to patently plagiarize, as well as noting its potential to spread misinformation. Some professors are concerned that the use of generative AI as an academic crutch is hindering students’ ability to critically think.

Gage Smith, Lecturer of Sociology and Anthropology at Whittier College, was an early adapter when it came to preparing for the AI flood even structuring his classes using old-school methods such as in-class essays and journaling in class discussions towards lecture questions. “It’s been a few years of me running my classes like this to the point of when I first did it other professors looked at me like I was crazy,” remarks Smith.

As for the current scramble to come to terms with AI in education, Smith adds, “the discussions are like, in my opinion, two, three years too late. I was talking about it at my departmental meetings back in like 2022 when I started changing stuff, but we started as a faculty talking about it in late 2024.”

Smith is not against the use of AI, saying “If it is collaborative work with AI, which is what I try to encourage in all my classrooms and promote in all my classrooms, I think it could be a beneficial thing, but if you are going to lean on AI to do everything and just take a back seat you will fail.”

Still, he encounters students misusing AI in his classes. During a recent group presentation in one of his classes he states “There was a group of students that I could tell just copy and pasted the prompt from inside the syllabus and gave it to AI. AI wasn’t able to parse the nuance of that prompt very well and ended up doing a little bit on all the topics that were assigned to all the other groups.”

This is one of many incidences that Smith has run into as a professor, and he cares about students mistreating AI as an easy way to complete their work. “What I am hopeful students will take away from my classes is that critical thought is important, and by gathering information and going through that process on paper you will not lose that skill of critical thinking, which I believe we will lose when we over rely on AI.”

A survey done by the Digital Education Council revealed that 86 percent of students globally are using AI in an academic capacity, with 54 percent of them using AI on a weekly basis. Revealingly the survey indicates that while students are regularly using AI they feel undereducated about how to use it responsibly and wary of its effects on education in both learning and evaluating.

“What I am hopeful students will take away from my classes is that critical thought is important, and by gathering information and going through that process on paper you will not lose that skill of critical thinking, which I believe we will lose when we over rely on AI.”

Smith doesn’t hide his use of AI and states he uses AI to create discussion questions for his classes, such as finding scenes from stories he can use to correlate with events from the class readings. However, he commented that if he wasn’t well-versed in the texts used in his class and relied on AI alone to make the proper connections, “the likelihood of me grabbing something that would not pair well or would only be tenuous or a weak connection to the material would be high.”

This is why he encourages students to be well versed in the material they are giving to AI to point out when you are being given bad information from AI. Smith also says his class is structured to give students a way to effectively use AI in a responsible way. “You’ve had to sit down in a class for an hour and a half, you’ve had to think about subjects, you’ve had to write about them and put those ideas together and into words and onto paper,” says Smith. By dedicating class time to reading, thinking and writing without AI, he hopes students will learn how to use AI as a study resource rather than doing the work for them. y

While the increased use of AI by students is alarming to many, professors such as Smith may be helping students become more versed and responsible in how they utilize AI in there academics. Still, the allure of convenience is hard to deny. A student who is majoring in physics and who requested anonymity said, “I use AI often, but mainly to understand how something works or how it is done.”

Although he said that AI can’t always be a substitute for learning, he noted that when he doesn’t understand a subject and turns to AI for help, it delivers a different way of solving the problem than originally shown by his professor. This presents the potential of misinformation and bias in the AI models, as AI might just feed you what you want to hear from it rather than account for the teaching method in which you originally learning a concept.

The student also admitted, “Sometimes I just get lazy. If it’s like something I do not want to spend time on or I just really need it to be done, I will use AI”. In this way, AI acts as a sort of false security blanket students believe they fan fall back on as a last resort, which disincentivizes the learning process.

“Sometimes. I just get lazy. If it’s like something I do not want to spend time on or I just really need it to be done I will use AI.”

Smith is concerned about the atmosphere of AI revolving aroud it on and off campus. “We’re going to lose critical thought. I mean, already, we’re at this phase in our society where you ask someone something. ‘What’s the weather gonna be like? How do I get to this place? How much is the new Nintendo Switch Two? And they tell you, ‘Google it,’ and I think within a few years, we’re gonna be in this place where it’s no longer Google, it’s, ‘Chat GPT it.’”

Faculty, of course, are not immune to the lure of AI convenience, especially when it comes to grading. “I don’t think that there is a lot of motivation even on the faculty end of things to do something proactive about AI,” Smith says. “They view it as like, well if I’m going to be overworked and underpaid, this is a good way to cut corners and shortcut.”

“We’re going to lose critical thought. I mean, already, we’re at this phase in our society where you ask someone something. ‘What’s the weather gonna be like? How do I get to this place? How much is the new Nintendo Switch Two?’ And they tell you, ‘Google it,’ and I think within a few years, we’re gonna be in this place where it’s no longer Google, it’s, ‘Chat GPT it.’”

[The Professor Who Saw AI Coming was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Samantha Soto

For many athletes at Whittier College, the moment arrives quietly; not with a final whistle or a last sprint, but a sudden shift in routine accompanied by an unfamiliar emptiness. After years defined by early morning practices, game days, team meetings, and the constant rhythm of competition, recent graduates often find themselves confronting a transition they were warned about…but never truly expected. Their days of competing at the college level are done.

Two recent graduates, Elizabeth Roybal and Avery Gonzalez, both of whom played on the highly successful 2024–25 Whittier College Women’s Soccer team, highlight not only their journeys off the pitch but also the broader challenges many former collegiate athletes face in defining themselves after their athletic careers have peaked.

If you ever watched Roybal play soccer, you saw a relentless midfielder, tenacious and disciplined, always hustling for balls and rarely resting until the final whistle. (Full disclosure, I am a former teammate). But to Roybal herself, that role was never about stats or glory. “I have a team-first mentality.”

Roybal held herself to the highest standard so teammates could shine too. As her career neared its end, she pushed harder, no holding back, no saving energy. She left it all on the field.

For Roybal, that intensity came not from pressure or obligation, but from love. She “loved her teammates to death” and said she couldn’t imagine life without them or without soccer. It was the relationships, the culture, the camaraderie, and the familiarity of structure that made those years influential.

Of her final season, in which the Poets went to the postseason playoffs for the first time in years, Roybal said, “It means a lot to me knowing that our hard work has paid off, and I think it attests to the work that our class of 2025 has put into the program over the years.”

As an upperclassman, she didn’t view “setting culture” as a responsibility so much as staying true to herself, encouraging good vibes, building connections, and showing by example what it meant to be committed.

Once the fall season ended, spring practices came, and former teammates reunited for lifts and training. The sudden absence of routine left her with more free time than she’d had in years, and with it came the unsettling realization of how much she missed the structure, the identity, the certainty that soccer once gave her. After a lifetime shaped by sport, “stepping away felt weird and different,” she said.

“Stepping away felt weird and different.”

Still, she found a lifeline: coaching. Roybal accepted a position at her alma mater, South Hills High School, where she once played. She had long admired her coaches growing up, and now she had the chance to step into that same role; to lead, to mentor, to give back to the program that shaped her. Coaching keeps her close to the game she loves.

Now, as she pursues a nursing program at Concordia University Irvine, she draws on everything she learned on the pitch. She’ll start at Concordia in the spring of 2026, but she already knows what she plans to bring into that space. “Soccer taught me discipline, teamwork, and how to push through things even when they’re tough,” she said. Those same habits she hopes to apply in the classroom, clinicals, and eventually the hospital.

Roybal’s transition has been eased by the companionship of fellow alum-athletes, friends whose shared experiences help bridge the gap between a life with soccer and one without. She’s even found support in online communities: former athletes sharing their “loss of sport” stories, offering solidarity and understanding. “I’d scroll through TikTok or Instagram and see athletes talking about how weird it feels when the sport ends,” Roybal said. “It made me realize I wasn’t the only one trying to figure out who I am without soccer.”

Still, she felt the absence of formal guidance. “No one really tells you what to do after it’s over,” Roybal said. “You kind of just have to figure it out on your own.” Friends helped, she added, but the guidance athletes need when stepping into their next chapters was noticeably missing.

“No one really tells you what to do after it’s over,” Roybal said. “You kind of just have to figure it out on your own.”

Research suggests she’s not alone. A 2023 study by The National Library of Medicine notes that many athletes enter post-sport life with emotional strain. The study argues that “supporting a positive transition out of competitive sport is warranted” because targeted, evidence-based guidance is still missing for many after eligibility ends.

Roybal remembers noticing that gap even while she was still at Whittier. She recalls conversations with athletic staff where she expressed the need for more intentional support for athletes approaching the end of their careers. “We talked about how there should be more resources, more guidance for what comes after,” she said. “Everyone knew it was something athletes struggled with, but nothing ever really changed.”

“Everyone knew it was something athletes struggled with, but nothing ever really changed.”

Like Roybal, Avery Gonzalez built much of her identity through soccer and as a competitor. Gonzalez started at a Division I program, Saint Francis College in New York, yet quickly felt distant and missed home. A former teammate pointed her toward Whittier, where coaches reviewed her highlight film and officially offered her a roster spot. What Division I competition gave her in intensity, Whittier gave back in community.

That sense of belonging soon became her compass. “If you can’t connect off the field,” she told me, “you won’t have chemistry on the field.” Gonzalez embraced leadership not as a hierarchy, but as care; showing up early, checking on teammates, and prioritizing both accountability and friendship. She wore the captain’s band, but what mattered was trust, not the title itself.

At Whittier, though, knee injuries stalled her momentum. Her senior year, the one meant to be a culmination of everything she had built upon, was spent mostly on the sideline. So in her fifth year of eligibility, she chose to play through a torn meniscus. “I really wanted to play again,” Avery said. “I didn’t realize I was coming back too soon, but I just didn’t want to waste that fifth year. I wanted to push myself and be with my teammates one last time.”

“I didn’t realize I was coming back too soon, but I just didn’t want to waste that fifth year. I wanted to push myself and be with my teammates one last time.”

Minutes into her first game back, she scored on her first touch of the game — a header. One last eruption of joy. A comeback and a goodbye wrapped into the same minute. “I love that goal,” she said. “It was fun, and for it to happen on my very first touch made it even better.”

Graduation, however, arrived like an empty calendar. The routines she once lived by vanished overnight; she missed the structure most. And she is far from alone. A 2023 scoping review titled Adaptation to Life After Sport for Retired Athletes found that retirement from athletics often brings “identity disruption, loss of structured routine, and reduced social support,” noting that many athletes struggle because “coordinated transition programs remain limited or inconsistent across institutions.”

The support Gonzalez needed wasn’t there, and stepping into post-sport life meant doing so without a blueprint for what came next.

Like Roybal, she has found a way back to the game, just not inside it. Gonzalez now coaches at Claremont High School and for Cal State Dominguez Hills, a Division 2 program, working primarily with forwards, her former position. She encourages post-practice coffee runs and team dinners because she believes those moments matter. “Your teammates should feel like family,” she said. “When you spend time together outside of soccer, it always shows up on the field.”

She believes exactly what she once lived: chemistry is built before the whistle blows.

“Your teammates should feel like family,”

Yet uncertainty lives beneath all of that. A systematic review, Quality of Life and Life Satisfaction in Former Athletes, found that retirement from sport, especially unplanned transitions due to injury, can lead to identity loss, instability, and questions about future purpose. Gonzalez is in that space now. She isn’t sure where coaching will lead her. The questions linger: stability, long-term plans, what comes next, but still, she shows up.

She’s certainly not alone, either. Fewer than two percent of college athletes go professional, meaning the vast majority eventually face the same loss of structure that Gonzalez and Roybal face. Gonzalez said she also found resources to help with transitioning out of competition to be lacking. “There were no check-ins, no conversations about what comes next,” she said

Roybal and Gonzalez did what many former athletes do: they improvised. They coached and built new routines. They figured out adulthood in real time without a roadmap. Their resilience filled the gap, but as more athletes step into life beyond eligibility, the question remains: Who is responsible for preparing them for the years that last much longer than four seasons?

The NCAA invests millions in performance, training, and recruitment. But with such a tiny percentage turning pro, the real challenge is not just how to build athletes, but also how to prepare people. The real-world resilience Roybal and Gonzalez demonstrate has, no doubt, been bolstered by their time as student-athletes, but they also point to structural failures when it comes to building a post-sport identity.

Gonzalez put it best: “The system is built to train the athlete, not to guide the person they’ll become when the jersey is folded for the last time.”

When The Whistle Blows was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s barely sunrise at Whittier College and you can’t even hear the sound of cars driving yet. The grass is wet, the air is cold, and most students are asleep under their sheets.

Out on the soccer field, though, a row of athletes slowly move in unison, loudly counting out their hamstring stretches while their breaths look like clouds of smoke in the air. In the off hours, you can see how much college sports happens long before anyone’s watching. At basketball games, the pre-game shooting is not the warmup; at baseball games, playing catch is not the warmup, at football games, running routes is not the warmup. Warmups happen before all that and determine how ready the body will be when things starts moving fast.

The preparation increases at each level an athlete progresses to, but does more preparation increase an athlete’s chance of avoiding injury?

Anybody that has played sports understands the dilemma before a practice or game. In some ways you want a deep warmup, so you feel good and loose. The other part of you just wants to start playing. Especially on a day that you feel great just when you show up. The balance is between warming up well and conserving energy for the game.

Do too much and you might tire yourself out. Not enough warmup, though, can lead to disaster. Talk to enough athletes and you learn a lot of them have had a situation where something felt tight, but they didn’t take it seriously enough, rushing through warmup and forgetting about it. A lot of them will tell you the little tightness didn’t go away its own and either remained a lingering injury and they played through pain or it turned into something worse.

There’s a reason professional athletes with long careers are known for having detailed warmup programs. Tom Brady, has a seemingly endless stretching and mobility routine. Paul Skenes has a carefully structured throwing progression and is known for having a two-hour warmup session everyday before he even throws a baseball. Aroldis Chapman, even as a reliever known for throwing gas, spends significant time getting his body ready. They don’t rely on feeling good. They rely on preparation.

What needs to be examined is what athletes are doing compared to what they need to be doing. At some point, you could be doing too much of one part of the body or you could end up being counterproductive by taking too much time. Devin Lee, strength and conditioning coach at Chapman Baseball Compound, said its more about the right approach to warming up than the time spend doing it. “Minutes spent warming up do not have a direct correlation to getting hurt,” he said, then added, “having a more detailed and thought-out warmup is definitely going to reduce the risk of overuse injuries and could increase performance.”

“Having a more detailed and thought out warmup is definitely going to reduce the risk of overuse injuries and could increase performance.”

Someone that has been both an athlete and a trainer is Marcus Owens, a kinesiology major at Whittier who also interned at Mankind Physical Therapy. He has seen all types of athletes come in for physical therapy, from full tears to athletes trying to detour a potential injury before it turns into something significant.

As an intern, he helps make sure the patients are doing their exercises right, but isn’t the one actually giving treatment or prescribing exercises. He says that he would talk to the individual and always ask if they have a detailed warmup. Most would say that they do some arm swings, jog, and go straight into their sport. Owens agrees that warmups should not be an afterthought but should be a period in which your muscles go from cold and stiff to waking up and ready to go. He is seeing it in real time and when athletes treat warmups like they are optional, their bodies eventually remind them that they aren’t.

As an athlete himself, it is Owens’ observation that athletes, “Usually aren’t skipping warmups because they’re lazy, they do it because they feel fine.” He believes that people are willing to do long warmups and take the time but they simply don’t believe that they need to. The saying “are you hot or cold” in terms of how your body feels is more than just a metaphor, says Owens. “Your tissues need time to warm up and turn on,” he noted. Something most people do not understand is that the colder the muscles, the less it takes for something to tear.

Nothing shows you how important warming up is like getting hurt. Owen Moore, a pitcher at Whittier College had Tommy John surgery the summer before his freshman year. Before his surgery he warmed up like most high school players — not much at all. Now, he takes things a little bit more seriously, but has not jumped to putting in the amount of time as some of the pros like Paul Skenes.

Moore believes the thoracic spine is key. He isn’t about warming up his throwing muscles, but instead the ones around it and the entire body. “The throw comes out of the arm but that isn’t what powers the throw,” he said, stating his belief that the entire body needs to be warm and not just the arm. He said he now takes longer than most to warmup, about 45–60 minutes everyday before throwing.

“Weighted balls are leading to more injury than success.”

He also has a varying opinion from what many believe about warming for baseball — that you “play catch to warm up.” Throwing weighted balls is a common practice nowadays. As far as Moore is concerned, “weighted balls are leading to more injury than success.”

Rehabbing from surgery taught him a lot about what he needed to do to be healthy again but also to stay stay healthy and perform well. Since her changed his warmup routine, Moore has not been injured. Moore said he wouldn’t wish what he’d been through with the surgery and rehab on anyone. He sounds like someone who has been through it and has wisdom to go with the scars. “Hopefully nobody gets hurt because they don’t warmup,” he said.

“Hopefully nobody gets hurt because they don’t warmup.”-Owen Moore

The idea of a longer warmup is not specific to baseball or any sport. Vinny Andrea, a former Poet basketball player told me about how he got hurt his senior year of high school. Like a lot of young athletes, he thought he was invincible, but ended up getting hurt. During a pregame, he tried to dunk without warming up and he ended up with a partially torn patella. This kept him out for five months and he missed some of his senior season. After that he would be the first one to show up to the court and take an extra long time warming up.

Most people also do not understand how much of an impact injuries can have on your life. Andrea ended up going to a community college because he did not have the court time to get recruited. “If there was one thing I could go back and change, I would have taken my warmups seriously,” he said, voice tinged with emotion.

“If there was one thing I could go back and change, I would have taken my warmups seriously.”

So does a longer warmup lead to fewer injuries? Yes and no, the quality of the warmup is more important than the quantity. Smart warmups can be the key to reducing the risk of injury and also helping you feel confident in your game. The goal should be to try to warm up every part of your body so that you are ready to go. Foam rolling, stretching, activation, and dynamic warmups should all be used together before doing any kind of sport so that you can avoid injury.

When looking at it like this, the sound of stretching first thing in the morning starts to feel less like a tradition and more like self preservation for those taking it seriously. If there is anything to take away, it’s don’t rush and trust the process.

Like Tom Brady did. Brady was never a top prospect and is now the greatest ever. Paul Skenes only had offers from Air Force and Navy out of high school and is now the best pitcher in the world. LeBron James has been playing 23 years in the NBA and hasn’t slowed down. None of these stories are by accident, they are testaments to sticking to discipline, routine, and trusting the process.

Oh, and warming up properly.

Getting Warmer was originally published in POETINIS: DRINK IN THE TRUTH on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.