Swing High and Let It Fly

Dear Saint Mary’s Friends,

Happy July! It’s hard to believe we are already deep in the heart of summer: in less than one month, classes will begin at Saint Mary’s! I hope each of you has found some time for rest and renewal during these months when many families gather for backyard barbecues or vacations on lakes and seashores. This month, I technically became a “senior citizen,” and I’ve been reflecting on how almost my entire life has been defined by the rhythms of the academic year. From the day I started kindergarten, summers have been a kind of sacred space, a time to read and reflect, to daydream and plan.

I know that sounds like quite a privilege—to have the lifetime schedule of a student! Truthfully, the demands on a college president extend to all 12 months, but there is still something special and expansive about summer. And lately, as I’ve been thinking about what we do at Saint Mary’s, I’ve also been thinking about one of those special summertime things: our national pastime, the game of baseball! Perhaps I have baseball on my mind because I was at Fenway Park on Saturday night, rooting for the Red Sox as they beat the Mets. (Earlier in the season I cheered on the Cubs at Wrigley.) Or perhaps because I read about what Sports Illustrated writer Dan Gartland, just a few days ago, called “MLB’s Historic Night of Offense.” For readers of his newsletter, Gartland tallied up the runs scored on July 18: “Twelve teams scored at least 10 runs, and four games saw both teams score in double digits.” What a night for baseballs in flight—a different sort of “hit parade!”

You might be wondering: what does all this Major League Baseball scoring have to do with Saint Mary’s? Well, when I first read about these slugfests, the phrase that came into my mind was one spoken in June at the Saint Mary’s College Athletic Hall of Fame Awards. Kathy Cordes was honored that day for her work as a tennis coach and as the first athletic director at SMC, and in her remarks, she recalled professional golfer Patty Berg’s visit to Saint Mary’s for the 1977 dedication of the Angela Athletic Facility: “She hit a golf ball into the heavens, and advised us . . . whatever you do or wherever you go, always ‘swing high and let it fly!’”

Swing high and let it fly! What could be better words than these—not just for golf balls and baseballs, but for the ambitions and the accomplishments of Saint Mary’s students and graduates, and frankly, for our ambitions for the future of the College? As you’ll see in the next issue of Courier, the early weeks of summer brought nearly 700 alumnae back to campus for Reunion, and at the festive banquet, we celebrated the personal and professional accomplishments of several Saint Mary’s alumnae with the annual Alumnae Association Board of Directors awards. From educating girls in Tanzania, to serving the most marginalized populations in Houston, to running the Los Angeles Fire Department, to growing financial literacy for girls, these women—who graduated between 1963 and 2018—give us all so much to be proud of.

We also recently recognized five individuals being inducted into the Saint Mary’s College Athletic Hall of Fame: our first athletic director, two former stand-out student athletes (from the classes of 1984 and 2010), and—posthumously—two Sisters of the Holy Cross who served as team chaplains. All these high-swinging, high-flying individuals are representatives of something bigger than themselves, and I loved hearing about what their time at Saint Mary’s or their affiliation with the College has meant in their lives.

Over the next few months, you’ll start to see new materials coming from Saint Mary’s: a bold “refresh” of our admissions, marketing, and communication platforms—a different version of “swing high and let it fly.” We want our message to be clear: this Catholic women’s college is an engine of women’s empowerment and leadership, a place where students lean into their unique talents and graduate with the knowledge, the experience, the skills, and the confidence to create the lives they want. As we prepare to welcome one of the largest classes in recent history (435 first-year students!), we know these recent stories about the power of Saint Mary’s will resonate with a new generation.

Even though there are still a few weeks left before we greet new and returning students, I can already feel in my bones the changing rhythm of the academic year. The season of reading and reflecting will give way to a new season of action and implementation. I feel reinvigorated and ready, and I hope each of you will also bring a sense of summer renewal into the next phase of your year!

Warm regards,

Katie Conboy, Ph.D.
President

July 24, 2023