Nurturing Strong Young Women

Girls in Sports Leadership Summit Empowers Students

Last May, Adaeze Alaeze-Dinma, a former collegiate and professional women’s basketball player, took to the podium at Cushing and invited a group of young women to “Raise your hand if you’ve ever been told you’re too emotional.” A bunch of hands flew into the air. “How about being too assertive?” she asked. More hands were raised. “Too talkative? Too quiet?” The hands of the young women — athletes from prep schools attending Cushing’s Girls in Sports Leadership Summit — went up over and over again.

As this year’s keynote speaker Alaeze-Dinma, who serves as assistant athletic director at Springfield College, taught the room full of young female athletes how she tackled a similar challenge in her own life. As one of six Black students out of 64 in her own prep school class, Alaeze-Dinma said, “Being told to stop acting in a way or illustrating certain characteristics led to self-reflective questions like ‘What can I act like?’ ‘What’s acceptable and what’s not?’ ‘Who am I allowed to be?’ The answer to that [last] question is YOU! I made it my mission to not conform, but to be my true authentic self every single day.”

Giving students that kind of aha experience is what the Girls in Sports Leadership Summit is all about. The program coordinator, Dr. Jennifer Willis, launched the annual summit because she remembered nearly 20 years ago when she felt recognized as a leader. As a high school junior in Gorham, Maine, she was tapped for a select leadership program for female athletes. “It became important in my own identity as a leader and as an athlete,” says Willis, who went on to earn a doctorate in education and is now Cushing’s director of teaching and learning. “It helped me feel more connected to my school. It helped me feel more connected to the broader community.”

That sense of herself as a powerful woman was reinforced in college when she heard legendary Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer speak. “I remember walking out and feeling so empowered,” she says, “from that energy of strong women celebrating one another. Lifting each other up. I felt like I could make an impact. ”

When Willis arrived at Cushing in 2017, she yearned to create something similar for the young women in her midst.

ADAEZE ALAEZE-DINMA, KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT 2022 GIRLS IN SPORTS LEADERSHIP SUMMIT. (PICTURED AT LEFT)