COMMITTED BLUE DEVILS
22 Columbia High School student-athletes celebrate college commitments
TROY, N.Y. » Almost two dozen Columbia Blue Devils’ studentathletes were front and center, signing their National Letters of Intent at Columbia high school. Dante Albanese, Gabriella Broga, Bobby Fredericks, Alec Wright, track, Robert Cleghorn, Benjamin Forte, football, Matthew Deyette, John Hawkins, Colleen Kennedy, Rachel Morris, Shane Wyman, lacrosse, Michael Gonyea, wrestling, Julia Lettrick, volleyball, Amanda Lobban, Natalie Nista, Savannah Pascarella, soccer, Brandon Ostiguy, Justin Pangburn, Nicholas Stagnitta, Matthew Wimmer, baseball, Emily Zeyak, basketball, all made their intentions known in front of family and friends.
“I’m really excited because I’ve been wanting to play for the next level since I was a little guy watching my cousins play up at the next level and seeing them go on to do great things. This has just been a dream of mine, so I can’t wait,” Wyman said.
“SUNY Poly was education first and they have a really great engineering program, so I’m going to be going there for mechanical engineering and also some aerospace and they have lacrosse, so that was just the cherry on top,” Wyman said of what brought him to deciding upon SUNY Poly.
Wyman also reflected back on his time at Columbia and looked forward to expectations at the next level.
“Probably the relationships I’ve made with my teammates and how they’ve become family over time. We worked hard together and we’ve actually made some upsets this year that people didn’t think we were going to win and that was awesome,” Wyman said. “I just want to play my game and do well and make my teammates better and have them make me better and win some games next year.”
A trio of track teammates in Albanese, Fredericks and Wright, are looking to add to their accolades at the collegiate level.
“I’m really excited. A few years ago when I first started running track I didn’t think this day would come so fast but here we are, ready for the future, new facility, new teammates. I’m very excited, very positive and confident with what the future holds for me,” Fredericks said of his new opportunity at Utica College.
Fredericks’ teammates also shared in that excitement.
“I’m really excited. I’ve been running track since seventh grade and it’s a really big part of who I am. I’m excited to do it in college and improve myself and get better,” the SUNY Fredonia bound Wright said.
“I’m very excited, its been a longtime coming, I never thought I’d make it here to actually sign a letter,” the Stony Brook bound Albanese said.
All three sounded confident in their respective decisions and schools of choice.
“Utica, they have a really good chemistry program that I got accepted into, that’s what I’m going to be studying,” Fredericks said. “The track facili-
ties are amazing. I competed there at some of the high school meets. I love their track, I love their facility, their guys are great, the coach is amazing and I think we can do some great things next year.”
“I really like the campus. The coaches were really great, they really helped pursue me and draw me towards Fredonia and I have a real interest in the majors
they have there,” Wright said of both the athletic and academic programs. “I’m going to be studying video production and communications and I may do a double major in history.”
“It has basically everything I’m looking for, the major I’m looking for, they have a great track team. They have a big campus but not as big as say Notre Dame or so,” Albanese, who plans on studying chemical engineering, said of what attracted him to Stony Brook. “I’m hoping to start training off right,
after coming off of a couple of months off from this outdoor season and hopefully just get it started right and start up in the winter.”
The three track standouts also reveled in their time spent together running with the Blue Devils.
“What stands out to me is the coaching. My coach Ryan Jones, he prepared me for this day for such a longtime, since the day I met him, we’ve just been working hard since day one, running anything between the 100 meters to the 400 meters, just preparing each other for the future,” Fredericks said.
“Honestly, just my team, probably one of the bigger moments would be when we finally won sectionals this year during indoor, that was huge for us and our team hadn’t done that in 35 years, so it was really big for us, just coming together as a team was great,” Wright said.
“Definitely winning the sectional championship our indoor senior season and going to nationals as well,” Albanese said. “It was a lot of fun.”