Becoming an Aggie

Sports Science PhD Fellow Madison Treece reviews her last three years, sets goals for her final year in the PhD Fellowship program and delivers words of wisdom

Last 3 Years

I started my journey at Texas A&M University in August 2021. I was still figuring out what I wanted to do with my future. The opportunity to continue to grow academically by completing a PhD, while being able to be hands on working with athletes seemed perfect for me. Geographically, this was a big move, but I was ready for the challenge and to embrace this journey to the best of my ability. Since I was the first in this position, there was a lot we were figuring out along the way. However, that also allowed me to be more involved in creating what this role could be in the future, and the standards that we would now have. During the past 3 years, I have grown in confidence and skill. Our unit has grown in staff, services, and analysis techniques, and we continue to add collaborative efforts for academia and group skill "power hour" trainings. Along the way, we have created our own unit traditions, have had many laughs, and built great friendships.

Year 1 The Foundation: My first year was dedicated to laying a foundation. With athletics, I attended lots of practices and team meetings, meeting the staff I would be working with over the coming years. Time was also spent working through standard operation procedures and getting me up to date on the existing processes for assessments and report creation. Academically, I was completing the in-person course work, learning about the equipment we had in our PhD lab, and starting to think of potential projects and build out Internal Review Board (IRB) documents for the projects I planned on conducting.

Year 2 The Grind: By year two, I had my first taste at athletic staff turnover and onboarding our new Sports Science PhD Fellow, Drew Smith. Initially, one of my research project ideas was using mobile sensors to analyze sport movements in their sport settings. The change in staff meant this would not be a good time to take this project further. The staff change felt like I was starting over with a new foundation, since new relationships and communication styles had to be developed. While it seems like a daunting task to restart with introductions and it can be intimidating having new people come in, it provided the opportunity to adjust what we were already doing with some of our teams. In the meantime, coursework for my PhD continued. New project ideas came together with new IRBs and the journey of coding began. The advanced tools in my projects require greater automation and processing to be able to analyze, so coding became a necessity. At many points this year, a lot was "new" which got me out of my comfort zone. It was overwhelming at times with the overall workload, being pulled in very different directions with my PhD and sports science work. I continued to grind, enlisting the help of others for morale or technical support, and taking time to recoup. I made it through. The other side of the struggle promised great things.

Year 3 Finding my Groove: By the third year, I felt like a seasoned pro. I was making more progress on learning MATLAB, had completed almost all of my coursework, and was finishing up collections for my projects. I received recognition with my projects by receiving two student grants (one internally at TAMU and one externally with the International Society of Biomechanics in Sport), as well as a Student Research Award for one of my conference presentations. At this point, I had been on hiring committees for several Performance & Wellness staff, as well as sports science positions and felt very comfortable within athletics. I was doing more deep dives on the data collected from assessments with our athletes, and became more proficient, developing PowerBI dashboards for use with our teams. As our staff continued to grow, it was really exciting to feel like I was part of what got us to this new level. Within Sports Science, we were collaborating more and having more discussions of what we were doing with teams, metrics to use, how to present data, and what we want to continue to work on as a group to grow. With our other Performance & Wellness groups, we were increasing integration and utilizing our assessments to answer questions of interest.

Year 4: Finishing Strong

Everyone who talks to me about the beginning of my fourth year says how exciting it must be or how the light is at the end of the tunnel. While it is very exciting, it also is a little overwhelming. I am not focusing on May and my anticipated graduation, but rather all the things I need to get done to get to that point and all the things I still want to work on. The months leading up to my fourth year were filled with some shocking news. Athletic staff changes were finally settling when I was informed that my PhD director was switching institutions. While this has the potential to not change too much for me, the unknown can be daunting. My goals for year 4 seemed simple, be done by May. As I go into my final year, the specific goals and things that I need to do to reach this get more complicated.

Sports Science
- Work on learning a new athlete management system
- Increase frequency of team force plate monitoring
- Increase reliance on fellow sports science unit
PhD
- Complete coding analysis of high density EMG
- Write manuscript on projects
- Complete comprehensive exam grant
- Complete dissertation proposal
- Complete dissertation document and defense

Year 4 holds the promise of a different type of challenge but also for wonderful memories. We already have had some new additions to our sports science staff. Their eagerness to assist and learn will only help drive our group forward. Even when things get busy, our group remains upbeat and always finds a way to laugh and have fun.

Words of Wisdom

I have absolutely loved my time at Texas A&M University. Some of the biggest takeaways I have had during my experience working with the athletics staff and academically are:

Embrace the unknown and expanding beyond your comfort zone: Challenging myself to take this opportunity, work at new skills, and learn from other people has helped me grow exponentially.
Do not give up when things get hard or the unexpected happens: Focusing on yourself and where you will end up with your hard work will help empower you, while focusing on comparing yourself to others or all the things that did not go to plan, will hold you back and cause more stress. Things will happen that are out of your control- coaching, support staff, and academic changes – the dust will settle, and everything will work itself out.
Find your balance: Much easier said than done. When you have a timeline at your current spot, it will make you want to push hard at all times to make the most of it. But it is important to embrace the resources and minds you have. Enjoying the area, people, hobbies, traditions, and those other enjoyable things in life will help refresh you to be able to avoid burn out from constantly pushing so hard.

Schedule

Last 3 Years

Year 4: Finishing Strong

Words of Wisdom

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