BRIGHT FUTURES: Ashlee Donahue Set to Pursue Field Hockey and Adolescent Education at Elmira College
Years of hard work have paid off for Cato-Meridian Junior-Senior High School senior Ashlee Donahue, who is preparing for a new adventure at Elmira College. She will play for the Elmira field hockey team and study adolescent education with a concentration in history.
When she visited Elmira for the first time, Donahue immediately felt at home. She was impressed with the field hockey program and said the team seemed like a family.
“It was that stereotypical walk onto campus feeling of ‘this is where I’m going to go to school,’” she recalled.
Donahue named two coaches who had made a difference in her field hockey career at Cato-Meridian. Her first coach, Robin Bartholomew, gave her all the fundamentals she needed to succeed in the game. She also has a lot of gratitude for Carrie Smith, her coach for her first year on the varsity team. Smith returned as the varsity field hockey coach this year, which Donahue said was special.
Donahue also thanked her father for coaching her over the years in a set-up they made at home.
She smiled as she described her last season on the Cato-Meridian varsity field hockey team.
“This was one of the first times I stepped up as a leader, being one of the captains this year,” Donahue said. “Being able to play with such a great group of girls for my final season was such a special experience. I’ve made friends for life on that team and it’s such a wonderful thing to be able to walk away from high school with that feeling.”
At Elmira, Donahue will have to balance her field hockey career with coursework as she pursues a degree in adolescent education with a concentration in history. While it hasn’t always been easy, she has juggled athletics, academics, and extracurricular activities at Cato-Meridian and feels this experience will serve her well in the future.
“There’s something almost peaceful about balancing, like doing all of the work and keeping my grades up, then having that escape afterward,” Donahue said. “Being involved is just something I’ve always enjoyed.”
In the years ahead, Donahue hopes to find herself in a teaching position where she can teach one of her favorite courses- global or European history- and “spread the joy of learning to high school students.”