Ari Cardillo - 2016 Senior Athletic Awards Dinner Speech

Senior Arianna Cardillo (Richmond, Mass.), a four-year member of the Saints Women's Soccer Team, addressed her fellow student-athletes as the "senior speaker" at Emmanuel's Senior Athletic Awards Dinner on May 10, 2016. Ari's remarks are as follows:

Hello fellow NARPs, welcome to our retirement party. I figured since the banquet is now entirely seniors- that greeting would be appropriate.  For anyone who does not know that term, a NARP is a non-athletic real person.  Firstly, I want to thank you all for joining me tonight in celebrating our final respective seasons. Thank you to the parents, the coaches, athletics staff, and administration. I also want to invite you all to celebrate the conclusion of Alexis Mastronardi’s first and very successful academic year as our Athletic Director, as well as the athletic department staff and trainers that have supported us for the past four years.

Like many of you, I have grown up playing the sport that shaped me. I have been impacted and molded by the early morning tournaments, the late night games under the lights, the rainy practices that were supposed to be “cut short” but never were, and the many coaches- most instructing from the bench but many others screaming theatrically from the sidelines- I’m looking at you, mom and dad. We all grew up surrounded by a second family- our sports teams. We all jumped from team to team, grew personally and athletically as we moved up in divisions, and most importantly, decided to continue our careers in collegiate athletics.  We made the choice to bring with us into adulthood, a sport that shaped our childhood.  Now as we look back as soon-to-be graduates, you can see how the majority of our most memorable college experiences are defined by these sports.

The adjustment from a high school athlete to a college athlete brought about a new challenge.  Balancing practices and coursework as well as involvements on campus added a new dimension to our struggles.  And just when I thought I had mastered time management...Senior year came, and so did PChem…..I want you all to take this moment right now to thank or even to apologize to your teammates, especially your roommates, for your ranting, complaining and occasional mental breakdowns. We all got through it together, and we can not thank-you all enough. I think it’s safe to say that sports served as our stress relief outlet during tough times throughout college. Every time we stepped onto Clemente, the Emmanuel College gymnasium, and the Regie Louis track, we were able to escape all the outside noise, to-do lists, assignments and deadlines... and just enjoy the sport that we love.  Most non-athletes don’t understand this.  They think playing sports is an added stress to our already stressful coursework.  But to us, it's the only thing we have complete control over.  We control how we play, how we act on the field, and it allows us to express our true competitive selves.  That is the difference between narps and us retirees- we have etched into us, a stress relief technique, an outlet and skill set that we will never lose.  

I think we can all agree that our only memories of athletics are not just those that are during games.   The traditions and routines of my team are some that I will keep with me forever, and I know that each and every one of you could tell some very interesting stories about your teams and their quirkiness. Bus ride singalongs, team dinners, creative costuming for the ORIGINAL Midnight Madness, and off campus competitions, which brings me to the question-- who wins, men’s lacrosse? Offense or defense? We have memories of tournament trips to Myrtle Beach, Florida, Puerto Rico and for the women’s soccer team, the exotic Rochester, NY.   Although some of us may not have had the most luxurious tournaments, let’s all be thankful that our future teams will now ride in style with a new personalized spirit bus, and that Crystal Transport is now safely a thing of the past.

In our four years here, we have hung nine banners in the Emmanuel College Gymnasium.   Women’s Basketball, Men's and women’s cross country in 2013, men’s and women’s lacrosse in 2014, men’s lacrosse in 2015, and this year we congratulate women’s cross country and men’s lacrosse in winning GNAC titles.  These banners are representative of your hard work and dedication to the sport. Your contributions to the athletic department are no small feat. These banners are forever part of your legacy here at Emmanuel. You leave behind your success and passion, your dedication and drive, your sportsmanship and spirit. But also we congratulate the successes that are not documented by a trophy or a banner.  This year in particular, we congratulate women’s softball for making their program-first GNAC championship-game appearance.  We congratulate countless individual records broken for indoor and outdoor track, and cross country.  And we congratulate the countless teams who fought hard in their GNAC tournament games.   We have each seen our programs grow alongside us in the past four years.  We will forever be reminded of our hard work by the permanent turf burns and chronic injuries that cover our bodies.

It’s every athlete’s dream to get to the final game.  We’re about to enter the biggest game our lives, but this game looks a little different and the starting whistle’s about to blow. There aren’t any coaches, referees or subs. The only thing you will see are the sidelines of support: your teammates, family, friends and mentors. As we think about getting ready for this game, we think of the blue and gold uniforms we’ve donned for four years- with “Emmanuel” proudly worn across our chests. We think of the pump up playlists we’ve committed to memory. We picture the team huddle before taking our places and getting ready for the whistle.  But this game has a new uniform- black commencement gowns and mortarboard hats. Pump up music is replaced with the Alma Mater and the blue and gold uniforms are passed down to the next generation of Saints.  

My youngest sister is going to be a High School senior in just a few short weeks. Over Easter break she asked me what qualities in an athletic program she should be looking for. I smiled and had a moment of reflection. My answer to her was simple- find a program that will support your growth, intellect and spirit. I thought back to my four years with the women’s soccer team and my experience with collegiate athletics. I realized I had been fortunate enough to be involved with a community that fostered me and supported me as not only Ari Cardillo, #18 from Richmond, Massachusetts but as Ari Cardillo, member of dance marathon and chemistry major.

My hope for my sister is that she will find the program that best fits her- one that supports her while she’s a student and beyond graduation day. My hope for all my fellow EC Saints is that they find a new community that continues to support them and remind them of their accomplishments, as Emmanuel has done for all of us in these past four years.  As we reflect back to our first days on campus, we immediately can feel the emotions that were heightened in all of us.  Now, as we think about the future, some of these emotions from our first days here come back.  While we go on to have new jobs or continue our education we get to meet new teammates in our new coworkers or student peers and  new coaches in our bosses or new mentors.  But it is hard to think of making new friendships that are even a fraction of those that you have gained at Emmanuel.  It is time to forge ahead.  Everyone here in this room knows that we will make great professionals in our careers simply because we are Saints.  As the tagline states in the new undergraduate admissions video “we may be Saints, but we play to win.”  So I ask you all, to continue to play to win, but always remember that you are a Saint.