Alumni Update - Bridget Mason

This post is by Bridget Mason, a 2008 Case Grad.  I had the privilege of coaching Bridget

her senior season.  She was the heart and soul of the 2007 team, the type of player that teammates play to honor.  As a centerback, she was the backbone of our defensive line and played all but 4 minutes the entire season.  She also scored the most important goal of the season against Rochester on her Senior Night.  She was a star in a game that was largely a defensive battle.  We earned a corner kick, much against the run of play, and Bridget, like Bridget does, came through for her team by finding the ball in the air and heading it past the Rochester keeper.  She then rallied her team for the remainder of the second half and for two exhausting overtime periods, thwarting everything Rochester threw at us.  It was so fitting of Bridget and her career at Case.  She is the most competitive and passionate player I have ever coached, an inspiration to all of us involved in the program.

Nine months out of college has seemed like nine years.  I somehow imagined that I would have infinite amounts of time and that life would be considerably less hectic than it was in college. Wrong.  I especially misjudged how great it was to have the opportunity to be a part of a team, and how much I would miss it.

My soccer career at Case had a somewhat rocky start.  I had trouble making the transition from high school to college, and started off my freshman season with mono, and decided that maybe the whole soccer commitment wasn't something I could handle.  My dorm room sophomore year had a view directly over the turf field, which made it especially difficult to pretend like I didn't wish I could still be playing.  By the end of their season, sophomore year, I decided that I couldn't live without soccer.  It was driving me crazy not being able to play and those sentiments far outweighed whatever it was that made me think I should quit in the first place. My junior and senior seasons were fantastic - not necessarily in the traditional sense of having a very winning team, but in the sense that I was able to escape totally into the game or practice almost every time I played.  It was as if nothing else mattered - tests, homework, job applications, everything else went on the backburner.  On top of that great escape, I made some of the best friends I had in college with the other girls on the team.  I doubt I'll ever have another experience like this one, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of it.

I now work as an AmeriCorps VISTA (volunteer in service to America), and run a college-access mentoring program through Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA).  I recruit Drexel and UPenn students to serve essentially as college counselors in two of the West Philly public high schools. The students we work with have often been deprived of an even moderately decent public education and have constantly been subjected to less-than-ideal educational environments.  We work to help them formulate plans for graduation and expose them to a variety of post-graduation opportunities.  Although this job has been extremely challenging, I love it and am incredibly lucky to have been exposed to many different, and often ignored, perspectives on the state of public education in the U.S.

I miss Case and the soccer team very much, but I am finding new passions and am fortunate to have the foundations that my time on that Case turf with my coach and teammates provided me.

Pictures

Top (L to R): Bridget Mason, Kelly Goris, and Katie Skillin at the Annual Halloween Practice

Middle: Bridget playing her senior year versus Carnegie Mellon

Bottom: The 2007 team in downtown Chicago (also Bridget's hometown)