Parnell and Purnell Attend NCAA Leadership Conference

(ALLIANCE, Ohio)—Mount Union College tells students that being at the college is about opening doors; two student-athletes in junior men’s soccer player Matt Parnell (Uniontown/Green) and sophomore football player Luke Purnell (Springfield/Springfield Catholic Central) opened a large door to their futures as they attended the 2008 NCAA Division III Student-Athlete Leadership Conference in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

The conference provides NCAA student-athletes a forum to openly discuss issues that may affect them on their campuses and in their communities, while also providing them with the opportunity to enhance their leadership, communication, decision-making and problem-solving skills.  The conference also promotes better communication among student-athletes, coaches, administrators, faculty and communities. 

The mission of the conference is to prepare student-athletes for leadership in a diverse and dynamic society as student-athletes, coaches and athletic administrators work together to facilitate critical dialogue, address Division III-specific issues and create the partnerships needed to impact positive change at the campus, conference and national level.

Matt Parnell

“It really showed us our strengths and weakness, how to deal with and work well with other people,” commented Parnell, a defenseman who will be a senior captain on this coming season’s Purple Raider men’s soccer team.  “I think it will be a great help as I got to talk to a lot of student-athletes about experiences and solutions that they used on their teams.  I learned a great deal about team building and teamwork that will not only help me with soccer, but in my classes and really the rest of my life.”

“I learned a multitude of ways to impact the campus and bring faculty, staff, students, and students-athletes together to make the campus a more cohesive unit. I also learned about my leadership style and ways to understand others personalities so that I can be the best leader I can be,” stated Purnell. “The trip was amazing because you I was with 250-300 other student-athletes and we all got to hang out and share different ideas on ways to improve our campus.”

Both learned that talking to teammates more would be a help to their respective teams.

“Through some exercises I found out that I need to not only lead by example but become more a more vocal leader, both on and off the field” said Parnell.

“I also have to be a vocal leader. I will try to get the team involved more with campus events and also the Alliance community,” Purnell said. “I think I can also become more involved with other clubs and groups on campus and that is my personal goal. For the school my goal is that we can get the community and students to attend more sporting events.”

Purnell, whose father Garnett is the athletics director at Wittenberg University, talked of his career aspirations.  “My career aspirations is one day I would like to be an Athletics Director. At the conference I got to meet and sit down with the President of Academic Services and Vice President of Academic Services for the NCAA who both really spearheaded the whole conference. I am now in communication with them through e-mail and they said they would be able to help me get an internship out of college with the NCAA.”