From the moment Meredith Sinak stepped on the Stetson University campus, it felt like home.

“From the beginning, I loved that it was kind of a smaller campus. I went to a private, all-girls high school, so I was kind of used to that really tight close-knit community,” she explained. “When I got here, and I was with the soccer team, we had to come almost a month before everybody else came. Right away, I could already see that was going to be my family for four years.”

Although it required commitment and passion on her part, Sinak was able to excel academically thanks to the way in which professors and coaches work together for student-athletes at Stetson.

“I would say my biggest challenge was probably being a student-athlete, just trying to find that balance between sports and making sure I had enough time to do all of my work,” said Sinak, who played outside back on Stetson’s Division I Women’s Soccer team and graduated with a 3.612 GPA.

 

She was among the Stetson student-athletes who received ASUN Conference Academic Honors in 2017 for earning at least a 3.0 GPA. She played in a total of 58 matches for Women’s Soccer, had a few assists and recorded several starts.

“The Athletics Department and all my professors were super great about making sure they were working with me so that if I had to miss class, I was caught up already by the next class. Also, the Athletics Department was really good about working with our professors to make sure they knew when we would be gone months ahead of time so that we would not run into any problems.”

Sinak graduated in May with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, and a sociology and management double minor. And now this academic and soccer stand-out is on her way to Law School at the University of Mississippi.

“I got to take a lot of crime classes along with all of my psychology classes,” explained Sinak, who was also a member of the Psi Chi and National Collegiate honor societies at Stetson. “I was able to really tie them together. I just loved both sides of that. I think that’s probably what pushed me ultimately toward law school.

“Being a student-athlete helped me grow so much on and off the field. As far as the academic side, I loved how my professors would push me to pursue my goals, whether I thought I could do it or not. I kind of reached a point where I was questioning law school just because I realized it was going to be really difficult. I was not sure if I could do it,” she explained. “After taking the right classes and talking to my advisors and multiple professors, they helped me realize that it was definitely something I wanted to do. I’m really glad that I went for it.”