The eight student-athletes featured in this piece exemplify excellence on the field, court, pool, track and green as well as in the classroom. Their stories — marked by moments of triumph, contributions to their team and unique obstacles — highlight personal athletic success and the perseverance and strength defining women’s athletics at Trinity.
Moments of Triumph
Graduate student Ellie Catron, pursuing a Master of Science in accounting and representing Trinity in track and cross country, is No. 4 and No. 13 in Trinity history in the steeplechase and the 6k. She’s been All-Region three times, steeplechase Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference champion twice, SCAC women’s track and field newcomer of the year and All-SCAC nine times across two sports. Yet, none of these are her proudest accomplishments in athletics.
“It was my sophomore year of high school, the 3200 meter state championship,” Catron said. “I won, running under 11 minutes for the first time and setting a state record, which still stands.”
Catron wasn’t alone in highlighting a triumph achieved before her time at Trinity. Malea Cesar, sophomore soccer player and mathematics major, Jessica Mason, junior golfer and biology major, and Amy Benson, sophomore swimmer and biochemistry major, shared similar responses.
“My senior year of high school, I won the women’s Western Junior AM in Chicago,” Mason said. “It’s a big event … It was crazy.”
“First time breaking a minute in the 100 Free[style],” Benson said. “That was the first time I thought, ‘I can do swimming.’ It’s a big goal for younger swimmers.”
“Playing in the Southeast Asian Games,” Cesar said. “For Southeast Asia, it’s like the Olympics. We won our first international medal … and, in our second game, I had an assist in 15 minutes.”
Jessica Mason transferred to Trinity after her first year and was all-American, all-region first team, first team All-SCAC and SCAC golfer in her first season here.
“I worked hard to get here,” Mason said. “Before Trinity, I was at a school that wasn’t the best for me, and it was a struggle mentally.”
Amy Benson has been similarly prolific for the Tigers, winning 15 SCAC titles in eight events and five All-American honors with a chance to add up to six more at the NCAA Championships. This season, Benson won swimmer of the meet at the SCAC Championships and set a conference record.
“Both my parents were swimmers, and my brother swam in college,” Benson said. “I wanted to be like them … It means a lot that I’m able to live up to those expectations.”
Malea Cesar is unique. She participated in the World Cup before earning her All-SCAC first team, honorable mention and freshman team honors. Still, the weight of those awards was not lost on the former Philippines international.
“Coming to college was scary,” Cesar said. “Everyone said, ‘You were just at the World Cup,’ but this was different. To go in, perform at my best and be who I am, that was special.”
Cesar isn’t the only athlete to represent her country, as senior communication major and basketball player Josie Napoli represented the Stars and Stripes in 2023 and 2024.
“I got to play on the USA DIII Brazil team … That was awesome,” Napoli said. “This summer, I did the same thing, but in Greece.”
Similarly to Jessica Mason, Josie Napoli transferred to Trinity after her first year. In her three seasons for basketball, she has been All-SCAC three times, first team twice and SCAC All-Tournament each of the past two seasons.
“I’ve worked at it since fourth grade,” Napoli said. “Seeing that come to fruition throughout my college career, I couldn’t be happier.”
Sophomore volleyball player Courtney Pope, math and finance double-major, and senior tennis player Ruth Hill, environmental science and economics double-major, were the odd ones out, highlighting Trinity moments as their favorite personal achievements.
“I didn’t know I was even gonna get a SCAC award,” Pope said. “When All-Region came out … I remember Maddie Fate was like, ‘You’re probably going to get an all-American honor.’ When I did, I freaked out.”
Despite her doubt, Pope indeed won the trifecta in her second year in the program. Ruth Hill also didn’t expect her proudest moment in Trinity maroon.
“My doubles partner and I didn’t expect to be ranked in the top 10,” Hill said. “At the end of the season, our coach called us and said, ‘Hey, y’all are going to be ranked No. 8. That means you get All-American.’ It was a happy moment for us.”
In both singles and doubles, Hill has earned All-SCAC tournament, All-SCAC first team and All-American in all three of her seasons at Trinity and has been Regional Champion and an NCAA Tournament qualifier in each of the last two. Hill has been SCAC Player of the Year twice in a row and came into this season as the No. 13 in singles and No. 11 in doubles for all of DIII.
Team Contributions
Trinity’s nine NCAA-sanctioned women’s athletics programs have plenty of team honors too. Between the athletes featured, there are a combined 16 conference titles. Junior softball pitcher and marketing major Jordan Arce highlighted a different Trinity team achievement as her proudest in athletics.
“We had the most wins in program history,” Arce said. “People have looked down on the softball team. This is an opportunity to prove we can do big things like every other team on campus.”
Arce has helped the softball program to a massive turnaround in her two complete seasons in San Antonio, earning herself All-SCAC second team, SCAC All-Tournament twice and NFCA third team All-Region.
“I’m playing with gratitude,” Arce said. “I’ve had moments where softball was taken from me. God has been consistent and led me to success.”
Arce said her current contributions to the program stem from a moment before she had committed to Trinity.
“When getting recruited, the coach was like, ‘I want you to lead this team to win the SCAC,’” Arce said. “Before I got here, I knew that was my goal. My role is to set the bar high.”
Arce was not the only athlete who found their greatest contribution to be leadership. As a graduate student, Ellie Catron has gained a lot of the experience necessary to lead a collegiate track program.
“I’m a natural leader,” Catron said. “I’ve been a captain for the past three years. I’m loyal and willing to make sacrifices for my team.”
Under Catron’s leadership, Trinity track and field is three-for-three in SCAC Championships. Only one of the other eight student-athletes has had three complete seasons for the Tigers, and she is also three-for-three in SCAC Championships. Ruth Hill now brings women’s tennis into this spring season ranked No. 10 in the nation, hoping to make it four-for-four.
“I bring energy,” Hill said. “Our team does a great job of yelling for each other, and we like to say that we smother the team with energy.”
Just behind tennis in terms of rankings is Amy Benson and the swim team, who entered the NCAA Championship ranked No. 17. Benson’s thoughts on her contributions to her team were similar to Hill’s.
“I’m energetic at practice, singing a lot,” Benson said. “It’s fun, and others will sing with me. I feel like I bring that to the team, outside of being fast.”
That lighthearted nature can be key to sucess and is also one of Courtney Pope’s primary contributions to volleyball.
“I’m a teammate for when you need someone to help you laugh,” Pope said. “I bring a sense of comfort. I’m someone to lean on to keep the rally going.”
Malea Cesar gave a more technical soccer-specific response, mirroring the second half of Pope’s.
“My role in the midfield is … to sit back, communicate and organize,” Cesar said. “I bring a calmness to the team.”
While calming and lighthearted energies are key to success, teams need someone to prepare them for the intense heat of competition. Josie Napoli and Jessica Mason bring that to basketball and golf, helping to rile up their teammates.
“On the court, I work until I die,” Napoli said. “Sophomore year … I was the best complimentary player I could be. Last year, I had to step up. This last tournament was no different. I was like, ‘There’s no way we’re losing.’ People didn’t get that, it’s a new team, but I knew what it meant.”
“I’m very competitive,” Mason said. “I bring a motivated aspect. I want to be the best I can be to help the team win.”
Competitive fire, leadership, stability and fun are all keys to winning in athletics, which makes sense as these eight athletes’ contributions accumulate to a whole lot of winning. On top of 16 SCAC titles, these women helped their programs achieve an 11th-place finish at the NCAA Championships for golf, an NCAA quarterfinals finish in soccer, the most wins in program history for softball and a plethora of NCAA tournament appearances.
The Struggle of Women in Sports
Sports isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, winning and trophy celebrations or individual honors and conference titles. This is especially true when men’s sports have dominated the industry. Being a woman in sports has presented challenges for many Trinity athletes.
“In high school, there was a dichotomy between the men’s and women’s programs,” Catron said. “It’s a problem with sports. It can be easy to see women as lesser athletes.”
“At my old school, we had a male coach who didn’t understand us,” Mason said. “He coached both the men’s and women’s teams but favored the men.”
“Growing up, I played for male coaches who had football mindsets and made me feel I wasn’t good enough,” Arce said. “In softball, you fail more than half the time. That approach is difficult for a young girl.”
“With the passion I assert, people think, ‘She’s crazy,’” Napoli said. “If a guy did the same, ‘He’s passionate.’ That’s hard. I always felt like I had to apologize.”
“Where I grew up, there weren’t many tennis players, and they were mainly high school boys,” Hill said. “They were never mean, but they knew we were girls and knew they were supposed to be better than us.”
Even on the international stage, women in sports are often overshadowed by ther male counterparts.
“They think, ‘The World Cup, wasn’t that last year?’” Cesar said. “They don’t realize the Women’s World Cup is something they can be interested in.”
If anything, beating insurmountable odds is what sports are all about and these athletes have done just that to achieve success.
“At Trinity, Coach Daum keeps the teams together,” Catron said. “That creates a cohesive team where you see each other as equals.”
“I couldn’t play for someone that didn’t value me,” Mason said. “Here, I have a coach … who knows what it’s like to be a Trinity women’s golfer.”
“I wore it as a badge of honor,” Napoli said. “At the tournament, other team’s coaches said, ‘You’re the best competitor we’ve played.’ That’s all that I wanted.”
“It just made us work harder,” Hill said. “To stick it to them, and be like, ‘we can do what you do and do it better.’”
“The biggest thing I took away from the World Cup was the visibility for other girls like me,” Cesar said.
This is what it means to be a Trinity athlete. It means sacrifice, perseverance and tenacity. Malea Cesar summed it up best.
“It’s not a sacrifice to give things up, it’s the choice that you make to follow a dream,” Cesar said. “It’s okay to not be doing what everybody else is doing.”
Cesar, Catron, Benson, Pope, Mason, Arce, Hill and Napoli are not doing what everybody else is, and it shows. What these eight student-athletes have shown to get to where they are today portrays the heart and soul of Trinity women’s athletics.
