Warriors Attend Apple Institute
SWU sent a team of six to the conference including three student athletes, Director of Athletics Chris Williams, VP of Student Life Joe Brockinton and Senior Women's Administrator Julia Reininga to the conference. With them are student leaders Abraham Arredondo, Meo Owens and Holly Richardson. Joining SWU were representatives of colleges and universities throughout the NCAA Divisions I, II and III.
Southern Wesleyan University traveled to the University of Virginia to attend the Apple Institute in January as one of the benefits of joining the NCAA.
The Apple Institute is a drug and alcohol awareness conference hosted by the University of Virginia and the NCAA. The goal of the conference is to help student athletes and administrators become better informed about how drugs and alcohol affect collegiate athletes, and to help them make plans on how to better inform students, faculty and staff about the issues.
"I am so thankful that we got to take a group to the Apple Training Institute this year!" said sophomore Women's Soccer player Meo Owens. "It is an intensive time of learning and making action plans to take back and implement on your college campus. The goal of the Apple Institute is promoting student-athlete wellness and substance abuse prevention!"
"Going into this conference as one of, if not the only Christian school, it was interesting to hear about the problems on wet campuses and the different programs these schools had created to promote safety," said sophomore Volleyball player Holly Richardson. "We learned a lot about social norms and real life statistics to prove just how dangerous these situations can turn into. As a group, we came up with several ideas to make our campus better and a safer environment. We will be working on these projects throughout the semester and look forward to seeing a positive difference on our campus."
As a part of the conference, the SWU team had to put together action plans on what they can do to help students at Southern Wesleyan become more informed about not only life at Southern Wesleyan, but also on drug and alcohol awareness. The team came up with several action items that they would like to work on over the next few months including a video, recruitment drive-home about SWU pamphlet, poster and hang tags.
"I was very impressed with the institute and all the tools they provided to help make SWU stronger in this area!" said Senior Women's Administrator and Women's Volleyball Coach Julia Reininga. "Our student leaders who attended (Abraham Arredondo, Meo Owens and Holly Richardson) did a wonderful job getting involved and diving right in! I can't wait to see our action plans implemented to make SWU even stronger in these areas!"
With Southern Wesleyan now being full members of the NCAA, the Warriors have the opportunity to attend more conferences like the Apple Institute in the future.
Follow the Warriors at swuathletics.com.