Junior Griffin Smith doesn’t like to admit it, but his teammates insist he’s a perfectionist.
Standing at 6-foot-3 and with a lean, athletic frame, Smith is hard to miss when he’s playing ultimate frisbee. He admits he’s not one of the team’s most skilled players, but as the president of the team, his attention to detail has become invaluable.
Smith never wanted to be president. He wanted to be a captain, but realized the other players running for the position had more experience and knew the sport better, he said. This year, the club’s leadership made an overhaul by bringing in a new captain, two new coaches and a new president in Smith. He’s in charge of the team’s budget, planning tournaments and ensuring each member has filed the correct paperwork.
“I don’t have that much game knowledge, Smith said, “So being able to help with logistics, paperwork, and making sure everything runs smoothly would probably help the team more than any strategy I give.”
Luca Serio, one of three captains on the team, said Smith “really accelerated (to) the role of a president through his organization and ability to remain on top of things.”
Smith ran for president unopposed, and now serves as the liaison between the club’s director and the rest of the team. He also coordinates game plans with the three team captains. Though Smith is nursing a pulled hamstring now, Serio said he’s noticed the improvements Smith has made as a player — Smith’s only been playing ultimate since his senior year of high school.
“He continues to come to every practice, and he’s helping the other injured kids just get better,” Serio said. “He is determined to become a better thrower than I am, and he tells me that every day, and he does things in practice to prove it to me.”
Trevor Kaminski, a freshman on the ultimate team, said Griffin and the rest of leadership made it a priority to foster a family-like bond amongst the team. One time, Smith invited a few rookies to the team house and cooked them ribs and macaroni and cheese. He then walked Kaminski home to Dellplain Hall to make sure he was safe.
“I just see him as another resource,” Kaminski said. “He’s always positive and goes out of his way to help people, and it doesn’t matter who you are. He knows a lot about SU and even just life in general.”
When Smith’s not on the field or running the ultimate frisbee club, he works as a student supervisor at MakerSpace, SU’s 3D printing and design studio. He’s also developed a Google Drive with homework, quizzes and tests to help engineering students on the ultimate team, Serio said.
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Smith is a mechanical engineering major, and he spends much of his free time — roughly 10 hours per week —in MakerSpace. He is currently working on two bioengineering projects. He leads a team in building a cheap bone drill for a nonprofit in India, and helps manufacture a rehabilitation device for patients with spinal stenosis.
“He is always creating things, like magnets, stickers, and cutouts for t-shirts,” Serio said. “It’s pretty cool for him to be able to do that, and it’s really exciting to watch him go through all that stuff.”
Despite a heavy course load —he also minors in computer science and biology — Smith said he’s not challenged by balancing his classwork with MakerSpace activities or the ultimate frisbee team, which practices three times a week and has tournaments on the weekends. Smith avoids all of social media except Facebook, he said, avoiding distractions that would “take away any bandwidth.”
Smith spent the past summer working for CELLINK in Boston, Massachusetts, which makes 3D bioprinters. Smith said his dream job is to continue working with bioprinting, particularly the process of 3D printing with cells.
“I have always wanted to help make something that can help save and improve people’s lives even after I’m gone, and I think this is certainly a way,” Smith said.
Published on October 15, 2019 at 11:52 pm
2019-10-16 03:52:27Z
http://dailyorange.com/2019/10/griffin-smith-leads-club-ultimate-frisbee-1st-year-president/
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