All hands on deck: Coast Guard Academy’s rise to the top
In 2023, the women’s cross country team at U.S. Coast Guard Academy qualified to the NCAA D3 Cross Country Championships for the first time in 31 years. This past fall, they repeated this feat, qualifying for nationals for two consecutive years, the first consecutive team qualifying streak in women’s program history.
Photo by Jen Reagan
To sweeten the pot, they also brought home two consecutive individual All-American honors. In 2023, now senior Paige Phillips placed 36th overall, and, in 2024, junior Claire Semerod placed 40th when she out-kicked NYU’s Josephine Dziedzic by just a tenth of a second to secure the final All-American spot in Terre Haute.
What makes Coast Guard’s rise so impressive is not just the historic nature of their accomplishments, but that they have overcome countless adversities unique to a service academy to get here: spending summers on sailboats without the ability to run, getting thrown into the first year of college sports immediately following the grueling demands of initial military training, and even maintaining good health after spending an entire day in steel-toed boots.
If you ask the athletes at Coast Guard, however, they don’t see these circumstances as adversities. It’s expected routine, and it is what is preparing them to be both officers in the Coast Guard as well as one of the best teams in the country.
A day in the life
The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is a military college that both educates cadets in one of nine Bachelor of Science degree programs and prepares them to be fleet-ready officers in the U.S. Coast Guard. Their mission is:
“To graduate young men and women with sound bodies, stout hearts, and alert minds, with a liking for the sea and its lore, and with that high sense of honor, loyalty, and obedience which goes with trained initiative and leadership; well-grounded in seamanship, the sciences, and amenities, and strong in the resolve to be worthy of the traditions of commissioned officers in the United States Coast Guard in the service of their country and humanity.”
As such, a day in their lives looks a little different than most college students.
First-class cadet Sophia White rolls out of bed at 6:30 every morning. She has until 7:30 to grab food from the wardroom breakfast buffet, otherwise, it’s cereal and microwaveables. Back in her room, she doesn’t have to spend much time considering what to wear, as each cadet is assigned a uniform of the day.
On Mondays, she dons her Tropical Blue Uniform, the more formal of her daily uniform options, equipped with a light blue, collared dress shirt with shoulder boards and a name tag, navy blue trousers with a black and gold belt, dress shoes, and a garrison cap. For the rest of the week, she sports the working Operational Dress Uniform: an untucked, collared blouse that gets paired with trousers, a ball cap, and a pair of safety boots. Regardless of which uniform she’s wearing for the day, she must be fully dressed in it with her room in order and her bed tightly made by promptly 7:40 a.m. each day. No exceptions.
Photo by PDuddy
At 7:40, White heads to formation, where cadets assemble with their divisions, or small units with a specific role within the academy made up of members from all four classes. During formation, cadets do what is called “passing accountability,” or making sure all members are accounted for and passing off the resulting attendance up the chain of command: first to department head, then to Executive Officer (XO), and finally to Company Commander (CC).
“Your division is kind of like your little family for the semester,” White explained. “You make sure that all of the underclassmen’s classes are going okay, support each other at sporting events, and essentially make sure you’re involved in their life and know if they’re struggling.”
More so, divisions at USCGA are meant to emulate the structure of a Coast Guard cutter, with each class taking on specific leadership and mentoring roles.
From 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., White’s schedule then assumes the shape of a more traditional college senior. As a Marine and Environmental Science major, she’s currently taking over 15 credit hours of classes such as Environmental Policy and Law, Science Ethics, and a Senior Capstone.
Sound familiar? It might, until you consider the fact that intermingled with her academic coursework are various military procedures and training sessions. In a given day, a cadet will hear “Attention on deck!” and stand when a teacher enters the classroom, engage in leadership development and mental health discussions for military training, and even participate in more physically demanding sessions such as drill practice for regimental review or semesterly physical fitness tests.
A sample of White’s Monday schedule, called a POD, or plan of the day.
Between rigid schedules, rigorous academics, and military training, it’s hard to imagine where college athletics might fit into academy life. Given the physical demands required of a Coast Guard career, however, everyone at USCGA participates in athletics in some capacity. The time frame between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. is a sports period and, in White’s case, reserved for varsity track and cross country practice. This window has become a different harbor than the ones White frequents in her Coast Guard training.
“That's the time that we get to really be with our team, be in our sport, and hone our leadership skills,” she said.
Building leaders
At the center of both strong athletics programs and service academies is effective leadership. The purpose of attending any service academy is to create future leaders for the service, and it is this same leadership that has carried USCGA’s cross country and track and field programs to where they are today.
During track and field practice, the athletes on Coast Guard women’s 45-person roster come together under the roof of the Hallie E. Gregory Field House, where they train beneath a banner that says “Strive to Excel, Foster Unity, Instill Respect.” These words reflect the character of Dr. Gregory, the fieldhouse’s namesake and first Black head coach at any service academy when he became the head coach of track and field in 1980. They also reflect the culture the current roster of Bears have worked tirelessly to build into their team.
“We're really big on team culture,” White said. “A lot of what we do, in track and also at the academy, is building leaders. It’s [building] a team culture that was built on support [and] everybody staying healthy and being able to compete at the highest level that they want to.”
In response to her own wide-eyed experience as a freshman on the team, White expressed that it’s important to her and fellow senior distance captains Paige Phillips and Sidney Triepke to lead by looking out for their underclassmen and teaching them the lessons they learned the hard way when they first started at USCGA. They intentionally allot time for team recovery and injury prevention at the end of practice, share insights on how to balance a plate at meal times, discuss athlete nutrients like iron and protein, and make sure everyone, especially freshmen, feel welcomed at the dinner table.
Triepke explained that all freshmen must adhere to strict academy rules, like addressing others by ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ and sitting and walking in the position of attention, a military stance of readiness that involves upright posture and a straight-facing gaze.
“When you're a freshman, you have to ask permission to sit at an upperclassman table,” White said. “We were kind of anxious doing that, so, when we became upperclassmen, now we have this team tradition every day once we're done with recovery stuff at practice, we text our table number into our group chat. The women's team has a team dinner every night, and we always eat together. We make it a point.”
This team cohesiveness helped pave the way to Coast Guard’s recent athletic success. When a large portion of the team fell ill days leading into the national championships this past fall, first-years Mary Faltys and Hannah Edwards stepped up as the team’s third and fourth scoring members, respectively, to help the Bears earn a 31st-place team finish. Given all of the rigidity associated with freshman year, it’d be easy for first-years to feel like they want to crumble under the pressure, having negative impacts on their first semester in sports. According to Phillips, however, their success was because of the team’s unity and shared purpose.
“It's because we have been able to empower all of us on the team to know that: ‘I contribute to something bigger, and what I'm doing isn't just for me, it's for the team, it's for the Academy, it's for the greater Coast Guard,’” she said. “Every single person on our team is a leader.”
Photo by Jen Reagan
Because of the demands that come with being a student, athlete, and Coast Guard cadet all in one, it’s reassuring to know that there’s a whole team of support to lean on, especially on the hardest days. Triepke acknowledges that mental health is an important consideration on the team. “When someone's having an off day, there's probably someone on the team that has been through something similar because there are a lot of taxing things that we go through,” she said.
This point of relatability due to athletes’ unique schedule demands has become a point of strength for the Coast Guard team.
“We've all, I would say especially in the past few years, really come to find that as a point of strength for each other and for ourselves,” White said. “We take a lot of pride in all of the extra work that we do, outside of just running and school, and I think it's another way of re-solidifying to ourselves our mental strength and our work ethic.”
A different summer training
Perhaps one of the most unique elements of being a cross country athlete for USCGA is the impact each athlete’s summer obligations have on summer training, a crucial foundation in most college cross country programs. When Triepke spent her summer underway on a small boat, she trained on a stationary bike that was ratchet strapped to prevent moving from the rocking waves. When Phillips was aboard Barque Eagle, a 295-foot World War II sailing vessel that resembles what one might picture to be a pirate ship, she relied on jumping rope, pushups, squats, and situps. She recalled one of her male teammates brought a stationary unicycle on board for his training.
Photo by PDuddy
“It's challenging, and you don't get the traditional summer miles that everybody talks about when you're getting ready for cross country,” Phillips said. “We kind of have to go into it like alright, just get what you can.”
With such unique training circumstances, an understanding coach is vital to both summer training and in-season success. Head Cross Country Coach Greg Ahnrud and Assistant Cross Country Coach Ethan Brown face challenges many of their D3 coaching peers may never have to worry about.
“When we have team meetings with our coaches, the first thing that they will say to us is that we are preparing you to be officers in the Coast Guard,” Phillips said.
While most coaches urge their athletes to up their mileage or intensities over the summer in end-of-season meetings, Coach Ahnrud speaks with his athletes about their summer assignments, which range from Swab Summer (initial military training) to warships to basic training to international internships. His summer training philosophy is simple: if you can’t run, get really strong.
Photo by Jen Reagan
Strength training, even if at bodyweight, over the summer is crucial for athletes to be able to handle the training load that awaits them when they return to campus. The early fall is generally for building up any missed mileage, but athletes must exercise caution when easing into mileage and intensity, especially if they didn’t log many summer miles. The stronger they are from their summers, the sturdier they will be once the season is underway.
“We might peak a little bit later in the season, but we still are competing at the same level as all of these other people,” White said. She was able to run this past summer but completed most of her summer miles on a treadmill. For 70 of her 90 days of summer, White was underway in the Bering Sea aboard a national security cutter (NSC), one of the larger Coast Guard platforms. Thanks to an NSC’s size, its gym spaces are the largest, most well outfitted gym spaces aboard any other cutter and are equipped with treadmills for running.
While not all assignments require being underway on a ship, it can almost be guaranteed that each will be demanding in its own right. Phillips and Triepke both had busy summers, too. Phillips earned a competitive international internship in which she spent several weeks in Portugal. Triepke was Battalion Commander, the highest ranking cadet at the academy, and oversaw the entirety of Swab Summer.
Photo by Sidney Triepke
Laborious summers feel normal to the three seniors now, but it’s likely this would not be the case if Coast Guard was an NCAA D1 program, making its nature as a D3 service academy particularly rare. Of the five military academies in the U.S., only USCGA and Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA), who have never qualified a women’s team to cross country nationals, participate in NCAA D3 athletics. West Point, Navy, and Air Force, on the other hand, are all NCAA D1 institutions in track and field.
“At the bigger D1 schools, they have a lot more alterations of their summer assignments,” White explained. They're probably not going to be on a boat all summer without a treadmill.”
These academies are also much larger, with smaller percentages of athletes on campus. Coast Guard Academy reports that 62% of their student body is varsity athletes, while West Point reports closer to 23%. This disparity increases the chances that athletes at Coast Guard are needed to participate in activities such as drill, where once a week, cadets march with rifles and swords for up to an hour at a time.
Photo by PDuddy
Once again, however, the amalgamation of all the unique aspects of being a Coast Guard student-athlete becomes a source of strength. The primary goal of completing the program at CGA is to become an officer in the Coast Guard, and there’s not much that can prepare one for the gravity of a sports competition quite like military training.
“That is what they are preparing for us to do: to make the right decisions in high stress situations,” Phillips said. “In running, when you step on the line, whether it's cross country or track, whether you're a jumper or a pole vaulter or a thrower, when you get there, you are trying to put your body to the absolute limit and do everything that you can to produce the best results.”
She went on to explain that in distance running, the ability to make quick decisions helps her most with strategy. When to pass, when to surge, and when to be patient are all decisions she’s having to make constantly when she’s in practice and competition.
“All of these things put you in that pressure cooker and help you have the best character that you can in those situations,” Phillips said. “I think we really adopted that on our team and in running, and that's how we carry ourselves when we get to every single race.”
Looking ahead
On the last day of January, Phillips ran a 13-second mile PR of 4:57.09 at the BU Terrier Classic. The weekend prior, she ran 9:45.83 in the 3k, setting nearly a 30-second PR. On February 1, she was ranked in the top 25 in three events: No. 13 in the mile, No. 8 in the 3k, and No. 22 in the 5k. After her 83rd place finish at cross country nationals, Phillips is having the best season of her life.
Photo by @Diamondsmedia12
White is also on track for a storied season. She opened the year with a new school record in the 1k, running 2:57.74, and, at BU’s Terrier Classic, helped her team run to a top-10-in-the-nation finish in the 4x400-meter relay.
Photo by @Diamondsmedia12
Cross country teammate and All-American Claire Semerod is currently No. 24 in the nation in the women’s 5k, and high jump sensation Allie Wildsmith currently leads the nation in the high jump with her incredible No. 3 all-time clearance of 5 feet 10.75 inches.
Photo by Jen Reagan
The stars are aligning for something special to happen again for USCGA. This indoor season has the potential to be their most successful yet. The most All-Americans they’ve earned in a single championship is five, including one DMR team, an event this year’s squad has yet to contest, but one for which the Bears certainly have all the pieces to make a splash. In USCGA history, only Kaitlyn Mooney (2019 indoor 5k) and Michelle Kwafo (2023 outdoor 100m) have earned national titles, but Wildsmith’s trajectory suggests a third could soon join the ranks of Coast Guard greatness, a legacy that is steadily cementing itself amidst the top programs in D3.
The journey to get here has required all hands on deck, a sentiment that is quite literally reinforced to USCGA cadets each day as they prepare for a life of leadership in the maritime military force. What makes their success on the track and cross country course even more special is the shared understanding of the unique challenges each member faces during their time as a student athlete and member of a D3 service academy.
Though seniors White, Triepke, and Phillips will all move on next year to careers as officers or professionals in their fields of study, they are confident that they leave behind something special.
“We can show the entire country that we belong [on the national stage],” Phillips said. “Having the words Coast Guard on my uniform is something that I always have incredible pride in, so for the girls that are going to continue on the team, having that sense of pride every time you step on the line, [and knowing] you're symbolizing something greater than yourself, that's really cool.”