Catamount Sports

Champion for Justice

Student-athlete’s journey leads to social justice advocacy

BY | THOMAS WEAVER

After injuries sidelined him as a basketball player, Skyler Nash ’21 has focused his drive on effecting positive change in the local community. Opposite page: Nash celebrates the 2019 America East Championship with Catamount teammates.

Skyler Nash came to UVM in 2017 with his focus on basketball, determined to help the Catamounts pile up victories and develop his potential for a chance at a pro career. Hitting his first collegiate shot, a three-pointer against perennial power Kentucky at Rupp Arena, was an auspicious start on that road. But just nine games into the season, he would suffer a season-ending ACL injury. It was the onset of a cruel cycle of rehab and reinjury that would lead to the end of his playing days during the 2019-20 season, though he has remained part of Coach John Becker’s program, a supportive teammate at practices and on the bench at home games.

A cancer survivor from his high school years, Nash knows adversity and changing paths. In fact, it was in his Chicago hospital bed that Nash was struck by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words: “Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.” And as his hoop dreams faded, Nash has doubled down on his commitment to acting on the resonance King’s words held for him.

He credits Coach John Becker for helping empower his change in focus and staying with it. “He was really the first person who gave me the courage to move in this direction and follow what ultimately was my dream in terms of doing this work,” Nash says. At a point when he lamented not

spending enough time with the team, Nash shares that Becker told him, “You’re doing what you need to be doing and what I want you to be doing.”

Though graduation is this spring for the community and international development major, he has already been at work across the past year, balancing studies with two jobs: public policy and research analyst in the City of Burlington Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Department and director of Next Generation Justice, a fledgling non-profit working with prosecutors on policy. In 2020, Nash also managed the successful Vermont Senate campaign of Kesha Ram ’08, the first woman of color elected to the chamber.

Searching to describe her fellow UVM alum, Ram says: “Skyler, I always forget how young he is. He carries himself so professionally, he holds so much being an athletic leader, running a campaign, being a tall Black man in Vermont, working on racial justice issues in the State House. I learned as much from him, I think, as he learned from me.”

Though he takes pride in having a role in Ram’s success, Nash says he thinks he’s a “one and done” when it comes to political campaigning, preferring the nitty gritty of governance and policy work as ways to effect change.

Nearly from the moment he arrived on campus, Nash has been committed to staying in Vermont beyond his college years. And as he’s come to know the state and its people, particularly through his

work on Ram’s campaign, that commitment has only grown.

Comparing Vermont to his native Chicago, Nash says he was immediately struck by the sense of inclusion. “You hear the stories and feel the palpable energy of togetherness and inclusivity and that everybody’s equal,” he says. “And that was new to me because that’s not something that you view as tangibly in a place like Chicago, because as diverse as it is, it is also equally as segregated, racially, culturally, and by class.”

But over time, Nash came to see where some myth may cloud reality.

“Vermont, in a lot of ways it is a fantastic microcosm of the issues that we face as a country,” he says. “We have this really fantastic story that so many of us are attached to, and I think it’s that story that makes us really exceptional. But because of belief in that story, we sometimes skip the steps of actually doing the hard work necessary to making this an inclusive, equitable place for all people.”

Helping his adopted home state get there is what Nash is all about as he charts life after UVM. “It is really crazy for me to sit here now four years later and see where I’m at in this community and the way that it has accepted me,” Nash says. “But it also remains a constant challenge for me, and a lot of people I work with, to recognize that while we’ve been accepted, so many people have not. There’s continuously so much work to do every day to get the state to where it could be and should be.” UVM

Mathias Tefre won the 2021 NCAA Championship in giant slalom. Tefre was among nine Catamount skiers earning All-American honors at the championships, held in New Hampshire. In the overall team results, UVM placed sixth.

The men’s basketball team earned their fifth consecutive America East regular season championship. A semi-finals loss to Hartford, eventual America East tourney champion, denied the Cats another trip to the NCAA Tournament. Ryan Davis ’22 won the conference’s Kevin Roberson Player of the Year, the fifth year in a row the honor has been presented to a Catamount.

First year Anna Olson ’24 was named the America East Rookie of the Year in women’s basketball, the fourth time in program history a Catamount has earned the honor. Olson led the Catamounts this season with 13.3 points-per game and 6.8 rebounds-per game. On January 4, she became just the third player in league history dating back to 1984-85 to win America East Player and Rookie of the Week in the same week. Olson is also the ninth Catamount to earn three or more Rookie of the Week honors in a season.