If you received either of our last two Admissions Snapshots, you probably noticed our blurbs about some of the work we've been doing as an office to give back to our communities. I also promised to share a bit more about some work I was able to do this summer, and while I could probably go on for days about our awesome trip to Nicaragua, I figured some short stories and pictures would suffice.
Some of my former teammates and friends got connected with an organization called Lacrosse the Nations a few years back, and we had been hoping to participate in one of their service trips to Latin America since we heard about the amazing work they do. Well, 50 email threads and an immeasurable amount of planning later (thanks Julia!)...
We ended up gathering a plethora of Chapman family members for the excursion, including (in no particular order) almuni Connor Martin (AKA Con Bro Chill), Steve Felts, Drew Nordstrom, Amy Pamensky and myself, and current students/players Zack Urbany, Allie Kontny, Matt "Filthy Fifty" Walrath, Julia Hunsaker, Andrew Clayton, Mack Shaw, and Audrey Banjamin. We had quite a few other participants along as well, but I'll leave the intros to just those from Chapman for space consideration.
We focused our energy on quite a few different projects during the week, ranging from cleaning up school recreation areas to building an equipment shed for the new lax gear that was donated to the program. Here is a shot of the shed mid-way through construction. I know it's nothing special, but in case you didn't know, we don't have an architecture program at Chapman ;) Big thanks to our two Nicaraguan handymen for keeping this thing standing...and for demonstrating how to properly dissect a coconut!
Care to guess what's going on in this one? In case you couldn't easily tell, yes, that is a DJ in the background, and yes, we are at one of the local elementary schools outside of Managua during a school day. We didn't get the memo that class was cancelled, so we showed up ready to practice some LAX despite the unusual setup on campus that day. We made the best of our time, I even got a chance to spin some records with the only Nicaraguan DJ I've ever met.
This might be my favorite image from the trip. Chaptown lax players are big fans of the slip'n'slide (check out this vid!), so we thought we'd share our enthusiasm with the locals. Despite what it might look like, this assisted toss was totally consensual.
In summary, I think we all agreed it was one of those "life changer" type trips. After sharing some thoughts on our last night and reminiscing about our favorite and most challenging parts of the week, I couldn't help but contemplate just how grateful I was for everything. Our purpose for coming down to Nicaragua with the LtN program started out as a service project, felt like a vacation, and taught me more than I could hope to learn without leaving the comforts of home.
Here is one last picture of my roommate Matt and I and a couple of our future all-stars-in-training.
As we said in the Admissions Snapshot email, we'd love to hear your own stories of ways in which you've been able to give back to your communities. Please send us your stories and pictures to Grant at gcushman@chapman.edu, and stay tuned because we will be selecting one of your submissions to be featured here on the blog. Oh, and you just might receive some fresh Chapman swag too :)
Happy Holidays from your favorite Admission Counselors,
