Paige Telatovich's commitment journey

By Phoebe Cunningham        Photo credit: Instagram page: @paigetelatovich
   For Pittsburg girls lacrosse commit Paige Telatovich, she always knew she would go farther than anyone anticipated. As a child growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Paige’s talent in girls lacrosse was exploding already. Since playing lacrosse for the Bethlehem Bulldogs, Freedom High School, and a variety of club teams and camps, her skills only advanced and she was sought out by D1 girls lacrosse programs when her junior year came around. After being approached by USC, Pitt, and UPenn, she decided to further her athletic and academic career at Pittsburgh University to join the D1 girls lacrosse program. Although this wasn’t an easy decision, Paige says that Pitt fit her personality and the distance she wanted to go perfectly. 
   Paige says that the hardest part of making this decision was how overwhelming it was once the day arrived that college coaches were allowed to reach out. It’s scary for someone who still has a year left of high school to be thinking about college at the beginning of junior year, but Paige knew what she wanted and was prepared to reach her goals. She plans to major in nursing at Pitt, as it has been her goal to become a nurse anesthetist. Despite her separate career goals, Paige has always wanted to go to college especially for lacrosse. 
   Paige’s sister, Emma, inspired her the most to want to play in college. She says that “Emma started to play lacrosse before me so I just followed in her footsteps.” Seeing her sister playing in college and the team bonding, difficult challenges, and competitive games that she gets to experience playing D1 at Temple University made her want to partake in that too.
   After going through this process, Paige explained that wanting to play a sport opens up more opportunities when deciding where to go to college. Although it is sometimes less limiting to choose any school through common applications, being sought out by a school for a sport at such a high level is an amazing accomplishment.   choose where you want to go than common applications, it is a privilege to get to play a sport that you love at such a high level. It is still very important that grades of students are maintained because of the risk of getting an offer taken away. So although there isn’t a long process of writing essays and getting involved in lots of different subjects,  committing to a sport requires hyper-fixation for involvement. Paige has achieved lots of involvement in lacrosse by competing in lots of tournaments, playing for her school team, and many club teams.
   Another member of the girls lacrosse team, Lucy Kontir, said that seeing Paige achieve something so amazing has definitely inspired her. Lucy says that in order to go to that level, Paige has to be a hardworking student and athlete. When it comes to going to college for a sport, Lucy explained that it depends on the person and how much they’re willing to take on in college. Being able to balance both academics and a major sport is a very big accomplishment and it takes a lot of strength. Congratulations on this big achievement, Paige! 

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