The Hera Society, Dickinson’s female athlete honors society, has made going remote work for their organization as they develop their new mentoring program, Sister Devs.

Catie Nolan ’21, a Hera, commented on the society and its goals. “The HERA society is comprised of 7 driven, intelligent, and dedicated women and me. One of our goals is to work to promote support amongst female athletes,” said Nolan.

Sister Devs was developed in keeping with the goal of promoting support among female athletes. This program works to pair first year female athletes with two to three upperclassmen on other teams. In the era of the pandemic, the goal is to make first-years feel welcome in the athletic community and provide the opportunity for fun and engaging interaction between teams. 

The goals of this program reflect the Hera society’s values of promoting support among female athletes and to “cultivate inter-team and inter-class relationships between the female athletes on this campus” said Hera Jamie Singer ’21. The program will consist of meetings twice a month along with routine check-ins. Once students return to campus, the society plans to continue meeting using this same schedule along with the possibility of attending each other’s games. Sophie Laclef ’24, a member of the swim team, said, “I’m excited to connect with other women who are doing athletics at Dickinson.”

The program currently has 110 female athletes across all sports teams signed up, 30 of them currently representing the first-years in the programs. One of the individuals in the program, Carrington Bowles ’24 is starting on the swim team this year and stated, “I joined the Sister Devs program because I wanted to foster new relationships across classes and meet students from other sports teams. I am super excited to get to know girls outside of my classes and be a part of a new community.” The Hera Society has also been open to allowing first-years who hope to join teams in the spring to be a part of this program. 

The program officially started on Wed., Oct. 7. It began with a large meeting run by the Heras with all the mentors and mentees where the groups will then set their own meetings as a group. 

“We are hoping, especially now when the first years are unable to be on campus, that we can help them build positive relationships with other female athletes and gain a sense of our community,” said Singer. 

The program is underway and will continue to develop through the remainder of the semester.