The CC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Wasabi, had a strong season and is heading to the National Tournament in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 21-23 as their region’s champion team.

Lincoln Grench ’23 reports that in April 2022, Wasabi beat Air Force and Colorado School of Mines to win the Rocky Mountain Conference tournament. In May 2022, they had a decisive victory against Sul Ross State University, which propelled them into the championship, where they narrowly defeated Missouri University of Science and Technology to claim their bid to Nationals and the South Central Regional Championship. Wasabi returns to Nationals after having a 4-2 record at 2021 Nationals in Norco, California, where they placed ninth at the tournament. 

After the tournament, Grench was selected as the breakout player of the year second runner-up, and was selected as a part of the All American Second team as well.  

Here is a video filmed and produced by Wasabi team member Bergen Hoff ’22 that captures some moments of the team traveling to and competing at Nationals in 2021.

CC’s esports team was in Kerrville, Texas, in early April to compete with other Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference schools in the 2022 SCAC Esports Showdown. CC competed in six games (League of Legends, Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Rocket League, and Smash Ultimate), and were the only college to have a team for every game. Chad Schonewill ’03, assistant director of Solutions Services and esports coach and staff administrator, says student interest in the esports program was always pretty strong, but “it definitely rocketed this year.” 

At the Showdown, CC tied with St. Thomas for first place overall and then lost the tiebreaker, so ended up in second place overall. 

Pictured, the CC esports teams who won gold, silver, or bronze medals.

Two Colorado College students — Mazlyn Freier ’23 and Ramona Salgado ’24 — conducted research that revealed that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used data brokers like LexisNexis in Colorado to skirt sanctuary city laws. This research was featured in a report, and was independently verified and published in an article in The Guardian.

Over the last decade, a growing number of American cities and states have restricted the information local law enforcement departments can exchange with immigration authorities. According to the Guardian article, ICE has tapped a network of private technology companies to skirt such sanctuary policies, facilitating access to real-time information about incarcerations and jail bookings, which enables them to pick up immigrants targeted for deportation.

The documents featured in the report were obtained by a group of immigrant advocacy groups including Mijente, ACLU of Colorado, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and American Friends Service Committee. The Denver Post and “Democracy Now” have also reported on information covered by the report. The report is also referenced in a piece in the Washington Post. 

The students also presented their findings at a national webinar “{ICEOut} Sabotaging Sanctuary in Colorado,” sponsored by the organization Mijente, which policy makers and activists attended.

Freier’s and Salgado’s work on the report evolved out of their participation in the CC Sociology Summer Immigration Institute, now in its fifth year. According to the institute’s program director, Sociology Professor Eric Popkin, both Freier and Salgado, who are sociology students at CC, participated last summer in the program where they created a model for this work and then began to apply to Colorado context.  The non-credit summer intensive institute offers students an opportunity to engage in activist and/or advocacy work that aims to “confront escalating surveillance and criminalization of BIPOC communities (including the immigrant detention-deportation pipeline) by collaborating directly with community- based organizations.”

Jamilah Maronde ’22
she/her
Major/Minor: Psychology/Human Biology and Kinesiology

Q: Describe how you felt when you first arrived at CC as a first-year.

A: That first week at CC was a fever dream in the best way possible. Loved meeting new people from the start and can say that people have made the end of my time at CC (many of them the same people) just as wonderful.

Q: What did you study at CC and how has it changed you as a person? Are there any achievements/classes that you’d like to shout out?

A: Being a human biology and kinesiology minor, I know I want to pursue something related to nutrition/exercise science. Shoutout to the V02 max tests and 1.5-mile runs in Exercise Physiology… a workout class is my dream come true.

Q: Tell us about your favorite extracurricular activity and explain why it was important for you at CC.

A: As captain and social media manager of the CC Nordic Ski Team, I can say that club sports are the absolute best for being able to continue to pursue a sport you love!

The Colorado College 2022 Senior Spotlight is open to all seniors in the Class of 2022. If you are a senior who would like to be featured, please fill out this form.

The Colorado College Climbing Team has had a great season, with four members advancing to the collegiate national competition and the team as a whole placing third in Nationals’ Team Bouldering.

At Nationals, which was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the end of Block 7, Ben Blackmore ’23 placed second, and Noah Wheeler ’25 placed third in Men’s Bouldering. Conor Wellman ’25 placed seventh in Men’s Sport Climbing and made it to the top 25 in Men’s Bouldering. Manny Kahne ’25 also placed top 25 in Men’s Sport Climbing. Additionally, Blackmore and Wheeler both were invited to the collegiate world competition in June in Austria.

Additionally, the CC Climbing Team is ranked in third place in the bouldering team portion of the competition. For a small school like Colorado College, having the entire team place third against other schools like University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado State University, University of Utah, University of Denver, and other large universities, shows just how devoted these team members are to the sport.

One of the main things on Grace Evans’ mind when she applied for the Fulbright Program last fall was that she wanted to return to the Arctic. 

Her will to travel was instilled by her mother, who Evans said wasn’t able to travel much while growing up, prompting her to encourage her daughter to visit far-away places and embark on “intensive trips,” like backpacking Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains or living in the remote town of Ísafjörður, Iceland. So she applied for an award to teach English in Greenland, in part to get a “foot in the door” to that part of the world.

Evans said she’s never taught English before. Still, she has experience in teaching — much of which came from outdoor education like being a kayak guide and a ski instructor — but also from occasionally helping teach Spanish in local middle schools and working for nonprofits in science communication. “I have a pretty long history of teaching students and working with people,” she says. “I love working with people, so that aspect really excites me.”

Fulbright scholars in Greenland, Evans says, to teach English are typically sought for their knowledge as first-language speakers to help with conversation practice, as teaching assistants. Evans hopes that will be a two-way street, and that she’ll be able to pick up Greenlandic during her time there. 

“A big mission of Fulbright is to also get involved with the community, so it’s teaching, but also cultural exchange between Americans and the countries they’re getting sent to,” she said. “I’m really stoked to just meet the community because in these really small, harsher-environment communities, that’s so important.”