NOTE: The Senior Close-Up is an occasional feature on the Bard Athletics web site, with the focus being the life of a student-athlete at Bard. Here, every student must complete a Senior Project to graduate. The Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student’s cumulative academic experiences. Preparation begins in the junior year, and one course each semester in the senior year is devoted entirely to the Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a committee of three professors and participates with them in a Senior Project Review.
By Jim Sheahan
Director of Athletic Communications & Marketing
Almost everything you hear about Perry Scheetz is surprising.
As a high school freshman, she sometimes slept through science class.
As a high school senior, she skipped visiting Bard the first time around because she considered it a “hippie school.”
She played soccer for four years at Bard College … but really prefers running cross country.
She found, applied for, was accepted and completed competitive chemistry internships in Brazil and Canada over the last couple of summers by Googling “chemistry internships.”
She will be pursuing a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at Dartmouth College, with her personal goal to take part in the creation of a “green” alternative fuel for the airline industry.
It doesn’t end there. She has worked for Bard Emergency Medical Services as an Emergency Medical Technician. She’s beautiful, confident and personable. When she graduates in May, she will leave as perhaps the greatest female student-athlete ever to have attended Bard.
The humble and unassuming senior seems to be the only person that doesn’t seem all that impressed, or even willing to raise an eyebrow. She remembers vividly how she ended up at Bard, and she expresses gratitude about her experience.
“The first time I came to Bard was in February, and there was snow everywhere, and I remember thinking how beautiful it was,” said Scheetz, who was pursued by some NCAA Div. I schools for her soccer skills. “I remember when I went on the campus tour – it was the only tour that was really different than all the other tours I’d done. That tour has always been different and I kind of decided right after that this felt like the right school.
“The science building was basically brand new,” Scheetz continued. “I was an intended chemistry major. Bard turned out to be my best option.”
Raised by parents Robert and Bernice, and a year younger than her brother, Ben, Scheetz started drawing attention as a soccer player in her sophomore year of high school in Lancaster, Pa.
“By my sophomore year my grades had improved and I was on a really good club soccer team,” Scheetz said. “When Div. I schools started to show interest, I think it was just assumed that I was going to play soccer in college.”
So that’s what she did. Pursued aggressively by Bard women’s soccer coach Bill Kelly – now also the Director of Recruiting – Scheetz came to Annandale and made an immediate impact. She started all 40 games she played during her freshman and sophomore seasons, earning All-Skyline Conference First Team honors in 2010.
Secretly, or maybe not so much, she longed to run cross country in the fall. That couldn’t be done with the commitment to the soccer team, so she would often run after soccer practice, or run for miles on days when the soccer team was off.
This past fall after the soccer season ended, there were only a couple of cross country meets left on the schedule – the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championships, and the NCAA Regionals – essentially the postseason for cross country.
Competing in her first meet of the season, she placed an amazing ninth at the ECAC Championships, making her an ECAC Div. III All-Star. The following week at the NCAA Regional meet in Rochester, she ran the fastest 6K in Bard history, placing 51
st overall.
She has also run track for Bard each spring. She is the currently the school record-holder in the 800 meters, the 5,000 meters, and the 3,000-meter steeplechase, the event she won at the Liberty League Championships in 2012, making her Bard’s first Liberty League champion. She missed qualifying for the NCAA Championships in the steeplechase by one second last year, and hopes to rectify that situation this year.
Amazingly, she competed in soccer and cross country in 2012 with a painful torn meniscus in her knee. She had surgery over the winter and says she’s ready for the spring track season.
All the while she’s maintained her status as a stellar student. She completed a 12-week internship in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the summer of 2011. She worked as a research assistant, just as she did in the summer of 2012 for 10 weeks in Canada.
The subject matter? Phosphines and palladium.
“Everything I’m working on seems to have a ‘green’ tinge to it,” Scheetz said, referring to environmentally-conscious work. “I loved Brazil. It was very intense and in a way it was fun. While we were doing some of the more tedious work like filtering they gave me lessons in Portuguese.
“Brazilians are upbeat and warm,” Scheetz continued. “Canadians are more laid back, and it took me a little longer to make friends. It was similar work, but the hours weren’t as long. We also went to some festivals in Ottawa City and it’s a nice place to tour around.”
For now, she will finish work on her Senior Project, which has something to do with thiophene ligands (ask her to tell you about it) and will try to win another Liberty League Championships in the steeplechase.
Graduate school will be at Dartmouth College, which she recently chose over Queens University in Canada.
“Big picture I like green energy,” Scheetz said. “I’ve always been interested in working with airplane fuel. Right now there’s really only one airline that is putting money into research for that kind of thing: Virgin Atlantic. It’s expensive, difficult research, but it would be wonderful to do something like that.”
Scheetz discussed the decision with her family over Easter break and settled on Dartmouth. Her brother, who was an All-American runner at Amherst College and graduated from there with a Physics Degree in 2012, helped her decide, she said.
“There are a lot of things about Dartmouth that just have a tremendous upside,” Scheetz said. “I talked it over with my family and I think it’s the right decision.”
