It’s no secret that earning the opportunity to play your sport at the NCAA Division I level is not an easy thing to accomplish, but just how difficult is it? According to the NCAA, less than 2% of all athletes reach the D1 level in their sport. Last year, 7 Fallston athletes graduated and went on to a D1 university to continue their athletic career, so today we’d like to highlight them and their hard work paying off.
Cameron Rohner
Last December, Cameron Rohner committed to the Naval Academy, her dream school since freshman year, to play goalie for their Women’s lacrosse team. Cam’s hard work and dedication over the past 13 years has taught her to “just accept that if [she] didn’t succeed in one area, it doesn’t mean that [she’s] a failure of an athlete.” Her interest in the Naval Academy sparked in 2022 after seeing the movie Top Gun Maverick with a friend, persuading her to take a visit and ultimately applying to the USNA. Thankfully for Cam, her senior year was structured similarly to her schedule now, which has allowed her to learn how to handle the workload. Aside from her amazing club lacrosse coach who helped her develop into the player she is, Cam says, “My biggest mentor was probably my dad,” who made sure she always had the resources necessary to succeed in her lacrosse career. At the Naval Academy, students don’t choose their majors until the end of their freshman year; however, Cam is considering aerospace engineering or operations research.
EK Roeder
Another lacrosse goalie, EK Roeder, committed to the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Having played this sport for 14 years has taught her that if she “worked hard [she] could push [herself] to become better and make something out of all the hard work,” which is proven to have gotten her to where she is today. Going from a high school athlete to a collegiate division 1 athlete was a big adjustment to say the least. Although the schoolwork hasn’t been bad, “the amount of practice and intensity of practices is something you don’t get prepared for in high school,” says EK. Looking for a D1 school that offered her major and the ideal team wasn’t easy. Luckily, UMass Lowell allowed her to both major in biomedical engineering and minor in sports engineering while also giving her the exact atmosphere she was looking for. Additionally, EK adds her biggest mentor, Brian Chittum, coached her to where she is today, supported her through the recruitment process, and is still a guide to her today.
Leah Rhinehart
By now, it may seem like Fallston has a theme for producing D1 goalies, although this time for soccer. Leah Rhinehart committed to the University of Delaware to play for the Women’s soccer team, a sport she has been playing since she was four years old. Leah’s mentality that got her where she is “was to strive to be the best that [she] can be … which almost always requires time and effort.” Being surrounded by “elite athletes” all the time takes things to the next level on the field. “Everything is different,” Leah adds, from “requirements and responsibilities, to pace of game.” When deciding on a college, not only did Leah take into consideration the program she wanted to study – computer science with a bioinformatics concentration – but taking her time to commit to a school allowed her to look for a community of girls that supported one another wholeheartedly. While listing her mentors may go on for a while, the most important people throughout Leah’s journey is her family. The values she was raised with “showed [her] the importance of hard work,” which has had the biggest impact to the person she is both on and off the field.
Jason Roberts
Next up is Jason Roberts. Roberts became acquainted with the sport of football when he was in 7th grade, and ever since then, he’s known the feeling of drilling a field goal. Back at Fallston his athleticism was evident, not only being called on the field for a point-after attempt, a field goal, or a kickoff, but also setting up in the backfield as a quarterback, and even a receiver at times. Scouted by multiple D1 programs, Roberts ended up committing to Stony Brook University in New York. Roberts says he’s grateful to have “the opportunity to play at a high level and compete every day to be better than [he was] yesterday.” The five hour and 42-minute drive from Fallston to Stony Brook leads to a very different environment (to say the least). Roberts says the mentality that allowed him to make that journey and compete at the division-one level was “to work hard when no one else is working” and to be disciplined, putting in the extra hour. Roberts claims it was “one of the hardest things to do… all we did from 6 a.m. until 10p.m. was football.” Now studying Business Management with a minor in Manufacturing Engineering, Roberts is thankful for many people, including his “coaches, teammates, family, advisors, friends.”
Maddy Burns
Next in line is Maddy Burns, who’s playing softball for Villanova in Pennsylvania. A sport she’s known since second grade, Burns knew that going D1 in softball wasn’t going to be easy by any means. She had a mindset to push herself “to [her] limits everyday”, she knew that “nobody was going to do it for [her],” and she had a hunger for success. Now pitching and playing in the outfield for the Wildcats, she’s most grateful for her dad in her D1 journey, saying “he’s been the one who has gotten me to where I am today, he has always been my biggest pusher and taught me how to be motivated and driven.” Her motivation isn’t only for athletics, though. Burns is studying nursing at a top 4% Undergraduate Nursing Program in the country. “I like that Villanova has a competitive nursing program and I want to become a travel nurse,” she explained. “It’s also not far from home, has a great softball program and a nice campus.” All in all, Villanova is perfect for Maddy.
Anna Miller
Our second lacrosse player out of 4 total is Anna Miller. Now playing at the local University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Miller has been playing lacrosse for over a decade and has used a “humble but determined mentality” to help her get to the next level. “I have always strived to be the best version of myself, but it’s essential to do that in a humble manner,” she adds. Miller is now studying Information Systems at UMBC, but she wasn’t always destined to be a Retriever. “I never considered staying in state, but I couldn’t be happier that I did,” Miller continues. “It was important to me that I felt at home when I stepped on campus.” After spending 4 years playing for Fallston, she is well aware how important the team dynamic is to be successful, and she lists that as another reason she chose UMBC. Though the adjustment from high school to college was tough at first, it certainly helped being so close to home and “once you get into a rhythm, it’s much easier.” Lastly, Miller attributes her parents as her biggest mentors: “They were the first to congratulate me after a huge win or the first to cheer me up after a tough loss.” Miller adds, “I’m very lucky to be so close to home” and she knows “they will be repping gold and black at all my home games in the spring.”
Ayla Galloway
Last but certainly not least is Ayla Galloway. Now playing at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, she has played lacrosse since she was 7 years old. She says that the mindset she had that helped her go D1 was “to continue to push forward through all of the hard times.” She also says she “developed a sense of grit from [her] coaches” and that it gave her “the motivation to never stop working and to never stop reaching [her] goals.” For Galloway, the decision to go to Mercer came from her desire for a smaller school and for it to be somewhere warm. She also “wanted a great athletics program” and wanted “coaches that would push [her] further.” Ayla is also studying education at Mercer, and she says, “It was difficult at the beginning, balancing academics and athletics, but it definitely got easier to time-manage assignments and to get my priorities in order.” Galloway thanks one of her former coaches here at Fallston, Johnny Woods, and calls him her biggest mentor. “He never quit on me and would show up whenever I needed help in the process. He was a great coach and mentor in my journey and truly inspired me to be the athlete I am today,” she says.
