Pomona Today

The Fixer

November 13, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Maintenance Shop Supervisor Orlando Gonzalez is a hands-on kind of guy, working alongside his five-person crew on everything from unclogging shower drains to replacing shingles. But it’s his mind and his memory that are key to keeping the campus in tip-top shape.

While work orders come in through an online ticketing system, Gonzalez’ head holds another crucial data center. Growing up with dyslexia, he wasn’t big on writing, so he learned to remember things. “When I stroll the campus,” says Gonzalez, “there’s always flashbacks of what things need to get done, things to go back and check on.”

He knows there’s old furniture stored in such-and-such room, where the plumbing shut-offs are and where not to dig. Everybody, it seems, has his cell phone number, and weekend calls are part of the routine. “I have a lot of information about this campus,” says Gonzalez. “I’ve been in areas where people never go.”

He and his team work from the Gibson Residence Hall’s basement, where the hallway walls of their fix-it lair are lined with the detailed floor plans of campus buildings, all the better for dealing with anywhere from 20 to 40 work orders daily: “We get one done and there’s another just right after.”

Friday afternoon, when other workers might be winding down, is when those get-it-off-the-list work orders flow in fastest. Even summer is no vacation: they bring in extra workers to sweep through every dorm room and make repairs that can’t be done during school. They do, however, get together for a bonding lunchtime barbecue every few weeks.

“Our thing we have here, I think, is special,” says Mike Binney, a generalist on the crew for five years. “We get along, we have an understanding of what each other does—and respect.”

Gonzalez is always looking for a better way. For a time, the College was paying $800 a pop (ouch) to replace damaged security card readers; he worked out a method to only spend $100 to replace just a part.

He has worked at the College since 1997, first as an em- ployee of the central consortium, and then hired by Pomona. The maintenance team includes a plumber, an electrician, a boiler technician and two generalists, but nobody sticks to a single field of work—including Gonzalez. As Binney puts it: “I could be working on a sewer line and if I need help, he’ll jump down there and work with me.”

Still, Gonzalez and crew can’t do it all, not on a campus with 63 buildings, and so he also oversees the work of various contractors, from painters to gutter cleaners. They’d better do it right. If a contractor is getting called in for a repair that’s been done before, he’s going to recall it and go back to check his paper stack of work orders he keeps for the last 10 years. “We need stuff fixed,” Gonzalez says.

My Pen Pal, John Cage

November 13, 2012 by Kevin J.H. Dettmar Comments Off

When I think back on it—or look back, since I’ve of course saved both sides of the correspondence—the sheer temerity of the thing surprises and embarrasses me. I was a Ph.D. student at UCLA, two months from finishing my degree; he was, at age 77, nothing less than the great granddaddy of the American avant-garde. And yet I wrote him; and stranger still, he answered.

“He,” of course, was John Cage. I first encountered his work while writing a dissertation about the Irish novelist James Joyce. Joyce studies, or so it seemed to me at the time, was stuck in a pretty boring rut—a situation I felt jejunely confident my dissertation would soon remedy. And as I read around looking for genuinely new and innovative thinking about Joyce, I was surprised to find it in the work of Cage. While not a “literary” writer (though the author of several important books, including Silence [1961]), Cage was an inveterate, and more importantly an irreverent, reader. He stood so far outside the system he seemed not to know its rules; his natural curiosity constantly bent and broke them. He mostly wrote not about Joyce (or Thoreau, Stein and other favorites), but through them: he treated their texts as found objects (“readymades,” his friend Marcel Duchamp would have called them), and subjected them to “chance operations”—throwing the dice, casting the I Ching (the Chinese Book of Changes), or in his later years, processing texts through randomizing computer programs. In so doing, he estranged these texts from their writers as from themselves, rendering them new and freshly revelatory in the process. (A group of Pomona students will be performing one of Cage’s Joyce-derived texts, Muoyce [1982], on campus this spring.)

I wrote Cage asking him to contribute to a collection of scholarly essays I was editing which sought to revisit the impact and reputation of the literary avant-garde of the early 20th century. He wrote back immediately. My letter was sent April 23, 1990; his reply was written four days later. Mine was word processed and printed out on the then-exotic laser printer, rather like pages of that dissertation; his, almost calligraphic, was inscribed in a scratchy hand, on a peculiar piece of (im)personal stationery called the Note-O-Gram®—a triplicate form using carbon paper, bearing his name and address in Gothic Copperplate across the top. John (as he signed himself after the first letter) followed the directions printed at the bottom of the form precisely—keeping the yellow copy, tearing out the carbons, and sending the white (original) and pink (second carbon) to me. I was meant to reply on the white & return it to John, keeping the pink; but since he’d flowed out of the “Message” column and over into my “Reply” column … I just mailed back another laser-printed letter.

Shockingly (!), John found himself with too many commitments to be able to contribute to my project: “I am busy with music and graphic work, prints, drawings, watercolors.” But he never made me feel foolish for having asked. What’s more, he asked for my help with his work—“a large work (music) connecting Zurich & Joyce” for the 1991 James Joyce/John Cage festival in Zurich.

His were short letters—short, and sometimes strikingly beautiful. Reading the opening sentences of that first letter still makes my heart stop: “I would very much enjoy talking with you. Conversa- tion is so rare.” Imagine writing to John Lennon and getting that in reply: Cage was my Lennon (who shared his fascination with Joyce—Lennon was an inaugural subscriber to the James Joyce Quarterly). In that first letter, John invited me to visit him in New York; too shy, I quietly demurred, while cherishing the hope that someday I’d screw up the courage. Two years later he was gone.

The leitmotif in the three letters I received from Cage was, quite simply, generosity. Thank you for your letter and articles which I enjoyed,” he wrote on May 16. (Looking back 22 years later, I’m more than a little horrified to be reminded I’d sent him my graduate school publications.) Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Cage testifies to this quality: no American artist of the 20th century was more gracious toward those upon whom his work had made such a profound impression.

“Our intention,” Cage wrote in Silence, “is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of a chaos or to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.” Most of the photographs of Cage—and a greater percentage, the longer he was with us— capture him somewhere between an impish grin and a tremendous laugh. That’s not the picture you’d necessarily imagine when encountering his often-difficult art: but that’s the man I was privileged to get to know, just a little, through a flurry of Note-O-Grams® in the summer of 1990.

Kevin J.H. Dettmar is the W.M. Keck Professor of English at Pomona College.

John Cage Centenary:

Born in 1912, composer John Cage ’32 pushed the boundaries of music, experimenting with sound, environment and audience perception. The son of an inventor, his work also influ- enced painting, dance, performance art and poetry. In 1930, after two years at Pomona, Cage left for Europe. Throughout the year the College will join the centenary celebration of his birth.

Ritual flames

November 13, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Under the night sky, local Native American tribes led an evening of drumming, singing, chanting and ritual dances in early September to mark the beginning of Pomona’s 125th anniversary. Held the same day students gathered in the morning for Convocation, the Native American ceremony brought to campus individuals whose ancestors inhabited this site long before the College was founded.

The bear ceremony was the first held at The Claremont Colleges, notes Scott Scoggins, Native American program coordinator at Pitzer, who helped to organize the event. The traditional healing ritual ends with everyone joining in a dance around the fire. “Fire is our connection to the universe and the spirit world,” says Chief Tony Cerda of the Ohlone Costanoan Rumsen Carmel tribe, one of several whose members participated. “The same fire that burns in the stars, the sun and the center of the Earth also burns within us.”

Theatre Professor Betty Bernhard and playwright and performer Susan Suntree, who are co-teaching a new theatre class this fall, Sacred/Sites, came up with the idea of hosting the ceremony. “We hope it will become an annual event,” says Bernhard.

In the Right Place

November 13, 2012 by Jeremy Kniffin Comments Off

Jordan Bryant ’13 grew up playing on the competitive club soccer circuit, taking van rides all over Southern California for weekend tournaments, and shuttling back and forth to practices in Orange County every afternoon. By the time she reached Claremont High School she harbored hopes of playing Division I. It had always been her dream, in fact, to play for USC.

Bryant knew about Pomona College, but it wasn’t on her radar academically or athletically. Then she signed on for the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS), the program in which promising high school students take classes and live on campus in preparation for college. “I absolutely fell in love with it,” she says.

That shifted her priorities. “I knew how competitive Pomona was academically, so I made the decision to quit club soccer and really focus on schoolwork,” said Bryant. “I knew I could play Division I soccer if I stayed with it, but when I decided I wanted to be here, I knew that I couldn’t afford to spend three or four hours a day going back and forth to Orange County.”

She continued to excel for Claremont High, earning team awards all four seasons (MVP as a senior, Captain’s Award as a junior, Defensive MVP as a sophomore, Rookie MVP as a freshman). She was named the Outstanding Player of the Baseline League as a senior, and her com- mitment to academics helped Bryant rank in the top 10 of her class. And so came that acceptance letter from Pomona.

Bryant stepped right into the starting lineup as a freshman. Last season, she led the Sagehens to a 10-win season (10-6-1) and their first SCIAC Tournament berth in five years. She was a first-team All- SCIAC selection and a second-team NSCAA All-Region honoree.

As a central defender, Bryant’s impact on the program is enormous, but tough to quantify. You won’t see her name in the scoring summary due to her position, but she drives the ball as hard as any player in college, on any level. She’s also a savvy defender who has that knack for being in the right place, so much so that at times the Sagehens played with only three defenders last year, relying on Bryant to cover huge amounts of territory to allow more teammates to get forward. “She always provides cover for everyone and picks up the little mistakes around her,” says Head Coach Jen Scanlon.

The one thing she most wants to add to her resume in her final season is an NCAA bid.

“In the past, people would ask us how the season was going and we’d answer in vague terms, like ‘it’s going well’ or ‘I’m enjoying it,’” says Bryant. “Now that we’ve had some success, we can actually brag about our record and can afford to set the bar a little higher. Making the NCAA’s my senior year would be a dream come true.”

It would also mean a lot to Bryant for another reason. Her father, Neil, had a huge influence on her athletic career be- fore passing away suddenly in December, right after the Christmas holiday. He was a fourth-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres, and played in both the Padres and Cubs organizations during his professional career.

“I think the biggest thing my Dad taught me was to work hard and treat competition seriously,” she says. “I like to joke around and laugh off the field, but on the field, I think I put all that aside and play with a sense of toughness and arrogance. Not in a bad way, but I think all good athletes have to believe in themselves to be successful, and I think I took that from my Dad’s personality. I always liked to say that I was a chip off the old block, and I know I’ll keep that part of him with me whenever I take the field.”

Spring 2012 Sports Report

November 13, 2012 by Jeremy Kniffin Comments Off

WOMEN’S WATER POLO

Come Home With Me

Mahalia Prater-Fahey ’15 knew that she was going to be returning home to San Diego at the end of the spring semester. Thanks to her own timely goal, she got to bring her whole team with her too. Prater-Fahey scored the game-winning goal in triple-overtime as the Sagehens earned the SCIAC championship with a 12-11 win over Redlands, earning a bid to the NCAA Tournament, hosted by San Diego State.

The Sagehens drew No. 1-ranked Stanford in the first round. Prater-Fahey added another goal in that contest, and so did Sarah Westcott ’15, who grew up in Menlo Park, Calif., a few miles from Stanford’s campus. Pomona-Pitzer lost the match 17-5, but the five goals were the most the Cardinal allowed in the entire tournament on their way to the national championship. Another consolation: A Bay Area paper noted that top-ranked Stanford would be “facing their academic equals” in the opening round.

TRACK & FIELD

Champ Times Four

Anders Crabo ’12 capped his career by earning All-America honors in the 3000-meter steeplechase, finishing fifth at the NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships. Crabo also made the SCIAC record books by becom- ing only the second student-athlete to win four straight individual titles in the steeplechase in over 100 years of the SCIAC championships. The first four-time steeplechase champion was Occidental’s Phil Sweeney, whose son Luke Sweeney ’13 is a star running back in Sagehen football.

LACROSSE

Should We Bill Her For Some New Nets?

Martha Marich ’12 was named the SCIAC Women’s Lacrosse Player of the Year after end- ing her career with a remarkable 331 goals, despite missing half of her junior year with a knee injury. In one week of play, Marich led the Sagehens to four wins in five days in two cities (Claremont and Tacoma, Wash.), de- spite the team playing without any available substitutes due to injuries. In that span, Marich had 20 goals, including a game-winner with three seconds left in an 11-10 victory over Pacific (Oregon).

WOMEN’S TENNIS:

Battered, but Unbeaten

Sammy Chao ’14 was undefeated against Division III competition playing at No. 2 singles (15-0), despite battling a painful wrist injury for much of the year that required heavy taping before each match. Her only loss in singles all spring came against a nationally ranked Division II player from Cal State L.A. Chao’s efforts helped the Sagehens reach the NCAA Division III regional finals, and she was named to the All-SCIAC first team.

One of the most gallant performances of the spring came as Kara Wang ’13 fought for life in the NCAA West Regional finals. Late in the third set, and needing to win to keep her team’s hopes alive, Wang’s legs began severely cramping. After receiving all of the allowed medical attention, Wang fought on, serving underhanded and hitting high defensive lobs to allow herself time to get back into position and steal rest. Despite her exhaustion, Wang rallied from a 5-2 deficit and brought the match to a tiebreaker, fighting off seven match points in the process. She finally dropped the match 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-2) as Claremont-Mudd- Scripps clinched the 5-3 win, but not without giving the fans a memorable display of toughness.

How to Become a Musical Mentor Multiplier

July 2, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Set on enlisting Pomona student musicians to give free lessons to kids, Gabriel Friedman ’12 landed a $10,000 grant from the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Foundation to help pay for cellos, violins and other instruments. But his path to becoming a music mentor began long before that:

1) Get placed in a kiddie music class by your mom at age 3. Dig it. Begin piano in the second grade. Take lessons through high school.

2) Keep at the keyboard after coming to Pomona to study neuroscience. Start giving lessons after getting introduced to a mom looking for someone to teach her daughters. Around the same time, sign on as a mentor working with low-income kids for the nonprofit Uncommon Good.

3) Land a summer neuroscience fellowship in Vermont. Hear a speaker talk about the role of music training in children’s brain development. Hatch a plan to have Pomona students give music lessons to kids whose families can’t afford them.

4) Apply for a grant to buy instruments. Set off for a semester of study abroad in Europe. Get the good news about the grant in a barely-audible call over a hostel phone in Rome. Return to Pomona and start enlisting mentors.

5) See a slew of Sagehens sign up. Hold a fair for kids to check out different instruments. Watch the boys flock to the drums and electric guitars. Help the giddy kids try them out.

6) Carry on weekly lessons. Hold a big recital at the end of the year. See the young musicians perform with aplomb.

7) Hand off the program to next year’s coordinator. Prepare to apply to med school. Plan to keep at the piano.

– Mark Kendall

Overtime

July 2, 2012 by Jeremy Kniffin Comments Off

. It wasn’t until six months after he graduated that R.J. Maki ’11 faced the most hectic day of his action packed Sagehen athletic career.

He began that fall-semester Saturday in his role as a wide receivers coach for the Pomona-Pitzer football team while the Sagehens battled Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in the season’s big rivalry game. Then, when the final horn blew around 4 p.m., he went straight to his car and drove the 60 miles across the Los Angeles Basin to play for the basketball team against Division I Pepperdine University.

Maki managed to make it to Malibu on time. His uniform didn’t.

“One of my teammates was supposed to bring my jersey for me, since I couldn’t go on the team bus,” Maki says. “Then I got to Pepperdine, and unfortunately he had forgotten it. So I had to call Jake [Caron PI ’11], and he drove it up to Malibu and finally got it to me just before halftime.” Maki ended up playing six minutes in the second half, as the Sagehens gave the Waves a run for their money before falling 59-50. “I can’t say too many people have ever had a day like that,” says Maki.

Maki had graduated from Pomona in May 2011 with a degree in sociology, but there were two things that were still unfinished in Claremont: an M.B.A. from the Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University and one more season of basketball eligibility, since he missed one season due to an injury. He took a graduate assistant position with the football team, and once basketball practice started in October, his staff locker also became filled with practice gear.

The jersey run wasn’t the only time that Jake Caron has delivered something to Maki over the years. They grew up together in Claremont, attending Pomona-Pitzer games and serving as ball boys at home basketball games. The two friends left the Claremont bubble to attend Cheshire Academy in Connecticut during high school, but both returned home for college, with Caron at Pitzer and Maki at Pomona.

“When I left, it wasn’t my plan to come back necessarily,” says Maki. “But when I gained exposure to the East Coast schools … I saw how similar Pomona was. And it had the added benefit of being right in my hometown.”

The two were four-year teammates in Pomona-Pitzer football, with Caron breaking the school’s record for passing yards as a quarterback (8,408 career yards) and Maki setting the program’s receiving records (276 catches for 3,078 yards).

After coaching in the fall, Caron signed on with the Utah Blaze in arena football, while Maki multitasked in Claremont. The final basketball season turned out to be well worth it for Maki, as the Sagehens bounced back from a down year in 2010-11 and finished a close second in the SCIAC, losing the conference championship game to CMS in a nail-biter before a crowd of 2,470. That was despite having a young team that relied heavily on freshmen and sophomores.

“I wanted to do well and prove to everybody, myself included, that I could be part of a successful team,” says Maki, who played in all 26 games for his final season and scored a career-high 101 points. Freshman guard Kyle McAndrews ’15 has praise for Maki: “R.J. was able to help me, through his example and through his advice, adjust to the collegiate level.”

In helping to coach football, Maki had a chance to work with sophomore receiver Ryan Randle ’14, who made big strides as a passing target, finishing with 40 catches for 470 yards and seven touchdowns.

Maki also leaves behind his own football records that will be very difficult to beat. Though he acknowledges that he—like everyone on the football team—would have liked to have won more games during his career, it’s a sacrifice that he’s more than willing to accept for the big picture.

“There’s no way I’d trade my experience at Pomona for a few more wins,” says Maki, who has moved to San Diego to work for a private banking/wealth management firm after completing his M.B.A. a year early under a special program. “I loved my time here. The thing about Pomona is that people value athletics, but academics always comes first, and I think everyone who plays here has everything in the right perspective. No matter what happens, we’re always proud to wear the jersey and represent our school.”

Even if the jersey arrives late.

Sports Roundup

July 2, 2012 by Jeremy Kniffin Comments Off

The difference between victory and defeat is often a slender one, but for the Sagehens of Pomona and Pitzer, the winter of 2011–12 was a time of particularly nail-biting conclusions—none more so than in women’s swimming, where Alex Lincoln ’14 pulled off not one razor-thin victory, but two in as many days.

At the SCIAC swimming and diving championship, Lincoln won what seemed to be a once-in-a-lifetime race when she captured the 200-yard freestyle by a fingertip, edging Margo Macready of Redlands by four-hundredths of a second (1:54.27 to 1:54.31). However, the following day, she pulled off another photo finish by winning the 100-yard freestyle by five-hundredths of a second (52.21 to 52.26) over Chandra Lukes of Redlands, winning her second SCIAC individual title by a combined nine-hundredths of a second.

Not to be outdone, Pomona-Pitzer’s softball team turned heads with a 10-4 record in March as it emerged as a contender for the SCIAC crown, but what was even more impressive than the record was the way the Sagehens won many of those games. Six of the 10 wins came in their final at-bat, including five walk-off wins at home and an eight-inning win at Whittier. Kathryn Rabak ’13 was responsible for two of those walk-off wins, with a three-run homer in a 7- 6 win over Staten Island, and a line-drive RBI single in a 5-4 win over Cal Lutheran.

In men’s basketball, in front of overflow crowds, inter-consortium rivals Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Pomona-Pitzer each earned wins on the other’s home court with less than a second remaining. CMS won the first meeting at Voelkel Gymnasium with a coast-to-coast lay-up with 0.6 seconds left, moments after Jack Klukas ’15 had tied the game with a three-pointer. In the rematch at Ducey Gymnasium, CMS took a two-point lead on a three-pointer with 10 seconds to go, but Kyle McAndrews ’15 was fouled shooting a three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left and made all three pressure-packed foul shots for a 51-50 win. For the latest on Pomona-Pitzer sports, follow us on the web at www.sagehens.com.

Wild Time

July 2, 2012 by Lauri Valerio ’12 Comments Off

Pomona’s new Outdoor Education Center (OEC)offered its first Wilderness Survival class during the spring semester, making for some memorable moments in the woods. After four on-campus sessions covering such topics as edible plants and fire-making, the class culminated with students putting their new skills to use in the snowy Sierra Nevada, leading Lauri Valerio ’12 to wonder, “What did I get myself into?” Here, we get the answer:

Hour 1: Snow starts falling as we drive to the trailhead. When we arrive, our group of nine huddles under a tree that periodically dumps loads of the white stuff on our heads. “Don’t worry if you’re freaking out, because I am too,” jokes our experienced leader and OEC Coordinator Martin Crawford. At least, I think he’s joking.

Hour 4: We find a dry camping spot under a rock overhang and begin scavenging for dry firewood. I can’t tell if my shirt is drenched in sweat or if the moisture has seeped through. Either way, it’s cold.

Hour 6: I discover that eggs fried on a rock are surprisingly filling, though a bit crunchy. Luckily, Martin had let us bring extra food and gear because of the weather. Life as herbivores, we’re quickly learning, would be near-impossible, though we discover some deliciously minty leaves I keep nibbling on.

Hour 10: The fire dies down and the cold sets in. Throughout the night, I wake up shivering in my sleeping bag.

Hour 24: The clearer skies brighten our mood as we split into pairs to practice making traps, snares and water collection systems. Now, we’re spending less time on surviving and more on learning survival methods.

Hour 27: The running Hunger Games jokes become a bit eerie when Martin announces a friction fire-making competition. The Claremont McKenna students are sure they can beat us and, unfortunately, they’re right. Though my group creates a few embers, we never even get a fire started.

Hour 35: Tonight, I put into practice the survival methods I’ve been taught. I put a water bottle of boiling water into my sleeping bag an hour before I hop in and cocoon myself with a trash bag and tarp.

Hour 45: Finally, the end. After an almost-warm night, I wake up early so we can clean up camp and head back. The trail is a breeze when it’s not covered in ice and snow.

Hour 48: After devouring several pizzas, our group reluctantly piles into the Suburban and heads back to campus, where we face another type of survival situation: end-of-semester madness.

World at her Feet

March 5, 2012 by Jeremy Kniffin and Brenda Bolinger Comments Off

As a high-school athlete in Singapore, Annie Lydens ’13 loved to run along the forested nature trails near MacRitchie Reservoir at the center of the urban island nation. The only drawback: monkeys. The place is full of them, and if the monkey-mobs think you are carrying food, “they’ll chase you and jump on your back. You have to be on your guard.”

There are no monkeys on her back here in Claremont: This fall, she won four straight individual races by wide margins. Lydens started the streak by winning the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational on Oct. 1 by nine seconds, the SCIAC Multi-Duals by 29 seconds, the SCIAC Championship by 25 seconds and finally the NCAA West Regionals by seven seconds.

Annie Lydens '13

In November, she went on to the NCAA Division III Women’s Cross Country National Championships in Oshkosh, Wis. Her personal-best time of 21:02 earned her third place, the highest finish in Pomona-Pitzer cross country history, whether men’s orwomen’s. Along the way, Lydens earned the SCIAC Athlete of the Year and the NCAA West Region Runner of the Year honors.

Lydens has been on the move for much of her life. Born in Japan and raised in Singapore, Lydens has visited a different country every year since age 13. She lived with a Maori tribe in New Zealand, taught in a Bhutan village, sailed around Thailand and worked for a nonprofit in Cambodia. Attending Pomona is her first time living in the U.S.

Fittingly, she is interested in pursuing a career in international diplomacy. This past summer, she was an intern at NATO headquarters in Brussels, taking press inquiries, posting to social media and working long hours for meetings of NATO defense ministers. “Those days, I don’t think I sat down more than 10 minutes, running back and forth, fielding calls,” says Lydens, a philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) major.

Back on the running track, her athletic accomplishments are made all the more impressive by the fact that Lydens is relatively new to distance running. Already a soccer player at her Singapore high school, Lydens tried out running at the suggestion of the track coach, and she went on to compete in a variety of races, helping her team rack up points at meets.

It wasn’t until she arrived at Pomona that she began running cross country, just to stay in shape for track season, and finished fifth on the team at the UC Riverside Invitational before shutting down for the fall with a foot injury. In the spring of freshman year, she settled on the 800 meters (leaving the distance events to senior All-American Alicia Freese ’10), finishing fifth in the SCIAC Championships.

But in her sophomore year, with Freese serving as a coach and helping to push her along in practice, she found her permanent niche in the distance events.

The pair became close friends, and started running together on weekends. Soon Lydens broke Freese’s school record as fastest woman in the 6K. Now she has her sights set on breaking records in the 5K and 1500 meters. “I’m a really competitive person so I love racing,” she says. “I just get a thrill out of chasing people down.”

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