At first catching was a punishment.
“I played outfield when I was 10, and my coach noticed I was looking at the grass,” Boissiere says. But after she begrudgingly suited up as catcher, something clicked. Suddenly she was the primary social support for her team on the field, and in every single play. “I really liked being there—helping to pick the team up, telling them that it’s okay, it’s not all on you, there are eight other people on the field for a reason.”
As a student-athlete at Gustavus, Boissiere was given many opportunities to reflect on her own reason for being on the field and in the world. Through college and sports she discovered her love of people. She thrived at any task “where I get to talk to people all day.” She became a sociology and anthropology major. She took internships working with immigrant families at the YWCA, and with the leadership and coaching organization Good Leadership Enterprises, where she helped develop a marketing strategy on leadership for college students by asking them, “Where do you see goodness?” In 2016, she was named All-Conference. In addition to this year’s role as a Gustavus assistant coach, she’s developing her own creative services company.
Like those many years in the outfield, she had to drop a few balls in college before she caught herself. An only child, “I was very homesick,” she says of that first year. She got a tattoo to remind herself that her family and faith are always with her, including her grandfather who was a student-athlete. My light in the darkness the tattoo says. It has helped her remember it’s not all on her, and to listen more closely to the people and world around her. “The universe just puts up walls when you stop listening,” she says.
“I have learned that we were put on this planet to interact and share our goodness with one another. As cheesy as it sounds, people matter.”
Leave a Reply