Greenmen athletes sign National Letters of Intent

The National Letter of Intent is a document used to indicate a student athlete's commitment to participate on a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) sports team. Recently, on November 15th Aurora High School had 6 Greenmen sign their Letters of Intent to the colleges they will be attending in the upcoming fall semester.

On National Signing Day the individuals that participated are as follows: (Name - Sport - College)

Will McGhee - Wrestling - Old Dominion

Andy Garr - Wrestling - Columbia University

Jack Gorman- Wrestling - Cleveland State University

Morgan Copley - Volleyball - Kent State University

Shayla Sellers - Basketball - Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne

Julia Mazanec - Softball - Kent State University

Each one of these student athletes will be competing at the division 1 level and taking on the struggles of playing a college sport, while having to juggle academics along with it. The NCAA funds many programs that directly support the educational, financial, health and safety needs of student-athletes.

Women's Volleyball Coach Tyler Price states, “The opportunity to play at a college level is a great accomplishment. It is a good goal to reach for and will help you stay organized in school with time management.”

Many of these athletes had offers from multiple schools for their sport. The decision was not easy but in the end making a choice came down to a few factors.

Garr states, “Connection with coaches, future teammates, academic opportunities, and financial support were all things I took into consideration.”

All of these things were important to Garr when choosing Columbia as his future school. The athletics are not the only things these student-athletes look for. They are also looking to perform academically and strive towards their desired majors.

Sellers states, “The distance from home was important to me as well as the type of coaching staff. I also looked to see if the school I chose had the major that I wanted to do.”

Garr is looking to pursue a career in Engineering but does not know which discipline yet. Sellers is going to lean towards the sciences and finish out college with a degree in nursing. McGhee plans on attending chiropractic school in the future and the others are undecided.

Playing college sports is very important to many of these athletes because of how much time and effort they have put into competing. Most of them have been competing for almost 10 years or playing since a very young age. Being recruited has been a dream for many of them and they have now reached their final goal.