Emily Rollo- Women’s Swimming

Emily Rollo, ’17, was named First Team All-ODAC in her freshman and sophomore years, but came into her junior year with an even loftier goal: to be named a First Team All-American.

In characteristic fashion, she accomplished that goal, earning that honor with strong finishes in the 200-yard backstroke and 100-yard backstroke in the NCAA Championships. Rollo, now a team captain as well, has made a habit of accomplishing her goals in and out of the pool. One of those goals was not one that she pictured accomplishing going into college, as life gave her a severe detour her freshman year.

“My freshman year here on Halloween I was really sick and I had emergency throat surgery,” Rollo said. “A lot of people don’t know that because they wouldn’t know it looking at my swim success today. It was a pretty big setback that I overcame.”

Rollo certainly did her best to make people forget about her surgery, as she earned First-Team All-ODAC honors her freshman year and has not looked back. Among her many honors, being an All-American sticks out to Rollo.

“It was really cool,” Rollo said. “Coming off of my sophomore year I had just missed being named being named an All-American. I still had a great year but that was in the back of my mind all season. It gave me a sense of my hard work really paying off because to me being an All-American is the pinnacle of college sports. It was really rewarding and humbling for sure.”

Kevin Molnar- Men’s Soccer

While high school sports has largely turned into a race for Division I scholarships or prestige, the game of soccer was all that mattered to Kevin Molnar, ‘18, who is now a captain of the Generals’ soccer team.

“Early in high school I knew I wanted to play soccer for as long as I could,” Molnar said. “Whether it was at the DI, DII or DIII level did not really matter to me as long as I was playing.”

That desire to just play is part of what has propelled him to become a captain as a junior. While some people may cite a physical attribute or skill as their greatest strength on an athletic field, Molnar’s greatest strength has more to do with teamwork.

“My greatest strength is probably how vocal I am,” Molnar said. “Being vocal helps and being someone that can talk to people when they are doing something wrong or that can be talked to when I am doing something wrong helps.”

Molnar knows more than most about hard but rewarding processes, as he is currently on the pre-med track as a biology major. However, his hard work goes beyond just the field and the classroom, Molnar has an unusual hobby that requires a lot of hard work as well: woodworking.

“My family has done it ever since I was a little kid. We have always built things around the house and we built our current house,” Molnar said. “It took a couple of years and we only built part of it; we didn’t build the entire house, but we did what we could to make it cheaper.”