Fall sports captains participated in a captains’ meeting today directed by Athletic Director Elena DeSantis.

“As captains, they either get voted on or picked by their coaches,” DeSantis said. “They don’t have time to talk about what their goals are and what it means to be a captain, so we go over what that means and how they can do that.”

The first captains’ meeting was an extended, two-hour long session with a speaker from the Positive Coaching Alliance.

“Today we talked about being a positive role model and really walking the walk instead of talking the talk,” DeSantis said. “Things like being the first person at practice, being the person to pick up the balls and instead of telling people to do things, showing them by example.”

Hearing other captains’ ideas about managing their team is a helpful aspect of gathering all of the captains together, according to golf team captain Cameron Newman.

“These meetings are important because you can listen to all of the other captains and everyone’s ideas,” Newman said. ”You can hear about what other captains are doing and compare that to yourself and see how you can better yourself as a captain so you can help better the team.”

Sports captains meet every two weeks at lunch, totaling about five times for each season.

“Each meeting will have a different topic,” DeSantis said. “The end goal is to make better leaders in our captains and then create an overall better experience for everyone on the team.”