Rising Alumni

Ashley Van Vechten

Ashley Van Vechten says she’s a better student during soccer season. A senior defender and a cocaptain on the women’s soccer team, she finds that with practice or a big game coming up, she’s “more inclined to do my work so I can totally focus on my sport.”

Van Vechten, a three-time All-American from Brighton, N.Y., has garnered a long list of student-athlete awards, including a 2008 NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship. She’s a four-time All–New York State Defender and was twice named Defensive Player of the Year.

“She has a remarkable curiosity and passion for what she does, and she goes about everything in a determined manner,” says Terry Gurnett ’77, women’s soccer coach and associate director of athletics.

“I just love watching her,” says Gurnett of the woman he and teammates call “Vech.” “And she’s just nonstop hilarious.”

In spring 2007, Van Vechten studied abroad in Ghana, living on the University of Ghana campus and teaching basic math skills to young children in a small, understaffed school about 25 miles away. Recalling how teachers and students would bring her bananas and oranges to thank her for her time, and the “eye-opening experience as to what growing up Ghanaian really means,” she talks about returning to West Africa one day to “see what other opportunities are there for me.”

Van Vechten hopes her immediate future includes a Fulbright scholarship to take a job teaching English in Germany. Grad school may come later, and perhaps a professional job on a college campus.

“I’ve gotten some of the best advice from the professors here,” she says. “They keep telling me, ‘Keep going to school. Look at us, we’re still in school.’ That definitely appeals to me.”