Teammates for Life
5/4/2010 10:10:00 AM | Athletics
May 4, 2010 - Teammates for Life
By Jeff Friedman, Jaeger Civic Intern
Recently, the Dartmouth Women's Lacrosse team has added a new teammate to their family. It's not an additional player on attack or defense, but rather adopted a young girl named Carol Shepard, a 13 year-old battling Leukemia who lives in the surrounding Upper Valley. Colleen Olsen, Senior and Co-Captain of the Women's Lacrosse team, said that they had been trying to get involved with the Friends of Jaclyn organization, which was started by the Northwestern Women's Lacrosse team. The idea of the organization is to bring a child who is battling cancer into the arms of a college sports team as a new teammate. Yet, Olsen said "the waiting list for Friends of Jaclyn, has over 1,000 teams on it, and we hadn't heard anything from them since asking to get involved." Ultimately, Olsen, her teammates, and her coach decided that they would start their own organization at Dartmouth to try and build a relationship between Dartmouth sports teams and David's House at DHMC. Olsen said that their team decided to call their initiative "Teammates for Life" and took on Carol as a newly adopted member this spring.Olsen has said that "Teammates for Life" has been a huge success thus far. While many community service programs allow Dartmouth student-athletes to interact with those who are less fortunate, "Teammate for Life" seems to have a more intimate goal of making a young boy or girl part of a Dartmouth sports team. Olsen particularly described how "team members have been out to David's House to hang out with her the last two times she was here for treatments (she lives far away, in Candia, NH and is only at David's House on Fridays and Saturdays for her treatments at DHMC)." Olsen also noted how the team has absolutely fallen in love with her and that she is very inspiring to many of the women's lacrosse players. When they visit Carol at David's House, Olsen says that they "play with her on the playground, play her favorite game - cribbage, talk about lacrosse, get our butts kicked on Wii Sports, and hang out in the teen room at David's House."
At the Women's Lacrosse's recent game against Penn, Carol was on the sideline with the team in a uniform as a full member of the team and was honored at half team for being a new member of their team. It seems as if the connection between the women's lacrosse team and Carol has been overwhelmingly positive on both ends. Hopefully, more Dartmouth teams will be able to adopt their own "Teammate for Life" soon and help continue the successful initiative that the Dartmouth Women's Lacrosse team has brought to the Upper Valley.
Players Mentioned
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