Mirror - Vol. 37, No. 22 - March 28, 2012

              THEB^MTRROR
Week of March 28,2012 • Vol. 37, Iss 22 • Jfje Reflection of Fait'field * Independent Student Newspaper of Fairfield University
Fairfield's Own Qualifies
BY JEN CALHOUN
SPORTS EDITOR
Ever since Michael O'Keeffe
was a young boy in New Zealand,
his father would tell him that life
is all about stepping stones. He
took this mentality and applied it
to soccer, and the results were -
to say the least - impressive.
O'Keeffe, a junior goalkeep-er
for the Stags, has qualified to
play in the 2012 London Summer
Olympics as a member of the
New Zealand Under-23 team.
With a 1-0 victory over Fiji on
Sunday afternoon, the Oly-
Whites of New Zealand sealed -
their place among the 16 teams
fighting for the gold medal.
"I was actually commentat-ing
the MAAC [basketball] Cham-pionship,
and I was contacted
and told to coordinate flights so I
could go back for qualifiers," said
O'Keeffe.
While O'Keeffe was a mem-ber
of the team that qualified to
go to London, his spot amongst
the Olympians is not 100 percent
certain. The Olympic competi-tion
is supposed to be for the
Under-23 teams, but rules state
that once the team has qualified,
they are allowed to bring in three
players over 23 years old.
forth
With the addition of
those three players, along
with several others on the
professional level, O'Keeffe
will have to wait out the week
to see where he stands. For the
time being, however, O'Keeffi
sees himself as s/econd
string behind Major League*
Soccer goalkeeper for the a
Portland Timbers, lake *
lympics
I Gleeson.
"len we were
on the Under-17
team] it was a really
good and healthy com-petition,"
explained^
O'Keeffe. "I was pretty
much the starter. „un-.
til he took that spot. But
we've got such a good re-lationship."
A big part of O'Keeffe's
learning experience on
the team has come from his ,
relationship with Gleeson.■
'He's helped me a lot. We just
talk about [soccer]...I've learned
so much from him about what
the professional environment is
about," said O'Keeffe.
According to his Fairfield
coach, Carl Rees, the profession-al
environment is the best thing
O'Keeffe can take away from his
time with the Oly-Whites.
"It's just a completely differ-ent
level of competition. He'll see
the difference in preparing for a
game of that caliber, and be able
to see how more experienced
people will prepare," said Rees.
Rees and O'Keeffe were
quick to praise Fairfield's goal-keeper
coach Javier Decima,
saying that he has been a big
factor in O'Keeffe's, as well as
Fairfield's, success.
However, while skills such
as preparedness are things all
athletes can learn from excellent
jgpaches like Decima, there are
certain abilities that O'Keeffe has
that can't be learned. You either
have it or you don't. O'Keeffe's
mentality is virtually unmatched,
according to Rees.
"He always sets very high
standards for himself," he said.
"Technically, he is obviously a
very gifted athlete. His technique
in goal and his distribution is ex-cellent.
But it's the mentality first
and foremost."
It is this determination that
has made O'Keeffe one of the
best goalkeepers in Fairfield's
program history.
In his junior season with the
Stags, he had 18 appearances, 65
saves and only allowed 21 goals.
This sort of impressive
season had the New Zealand
coaches' attention, even though
O'Keefe still had to put in some
additional effort to be seen.
"Since being here in the
States, I suppose I'm sort of hid-den
from the coaches [back in
New Zealand]. That's part of the
reason why I went back last sum-mer.
... That got me back on the
radar and in front of the right
coaches that were involved in
the Olympic campaign," said
O'Keeffe.
After coming to play in the
states, O'Keeffe said, "The next
stepping stone I thought would
have been to go pro, but the
Olympics sort of bridged that
gap and added another stepping
stone."
So far New Zealand, along
with Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, Swit-zerland,
Belarus, the UK, Egypt,
Morocco, Gabon, South Korea,
Japan and the UAE have all qual-ified
for the Olympic Games. It
will be a tough competition for
the Oly-Whites, but O'Keeffe be-lieves
they are up to the task.
"I don't think we've really
put together a full 90 minutes
of perfection," he said. "If was
enough to qualify and now we've
got three months to really pre-pare
well for the Olympics."
By the end of the week, when
O'Keeffe finds out if he will be on
the flight to London, it will just
be another stepping stone on his
journey for the top.
As for bringing a gold medal
back to Fairfield, O'Keeffe said,
"It'll be a tough, tough task. But
we'll see."
Photo Illustration by
Martin O'Sullivan/Ihe Mirror
Spreading the Word to Keep the Fire Burning
BY DANICA CEBALLOS
NEWS EDITOR
Who do you want to make
out with on a Saturday night?
Would you let your parents
choose for you?
Like most of us, Dr. David
Gudelunas would rather decide
for himself. Similarly, Gude-lunas
explains that discerning
your passion must come from
within rather than outside forc-es.
He said: "You would not ask
your mom who you should make
out with. ...You have to find that,
you have to figure it out."
In celebration of Women's
History month, a panel of four
Fairfield "firsts" set out to em-power
students to be trailblazers
by telling their success stories
as the first in their specific field.
With about 45 students gathered
in the Kelley Center last Thurs-day
night, the panelists remi-nisced
on their journeys and
interacted with students encour-aging
them to pursue their own
goals.
When discussing her strug-gle
towards becoming ■ a pub-lished
author, Alexa Mullady
discussed the necessity of self-satisfaction
as opposed to praise
from others. "Most people say it
is impossible to get published,"
she said. "Don't do it. You will
just get rejected,' they said. I
have sent something to a pub-lisher
once, but for now, I just
like writing and I am happy with
that."
The panelists stressed the
importance of placing yourself
in uncomfortable situations in
order to grow. Dr. Patricia Behre
said, "Life is sort of a combina-tion
of feeling comfortable and
uncomfortable and using both
of those."
While the panel was re-ferred
to as "trailblazers and
troublemakers," Mullady said
that she is usually grateful to be
referred to as a troublemaker.
Gudelunas agreed: "The
idea of being a troublemaker is
... that you're trouble for other
people. That's okay. It's not your
trouble. It's their problem."
"Trailblazers and Trouble-makers:
Fairfield Firsts" took
place >on March'22 as part of
Danica Ceballos/'Ihc Mirror
Fairfield faculty and staff discuss why they are titled "Trailblazers and Troublemakers: Fairfield First."
Women's History Month and
consisted of a panel of four
"firsts" from Fairfield University
including Alexa Mullady, David
Gudelunas, Karen Donoghue
and Patricia Behre. Its purpose
was to underscore the theme of
empowerment shared by groups
on campus.
Alexa Mullady is a Fairfield
University alumna from the first
decade of co-education. She ma-jored
in English and minored in
EducariV».*Qufrem)y^!l*u4lady is
the program assistant in the Col-lege
of Arts and Sciences. She
also participates in the town of
Fairfield as the Parks and Recre-ation
Commissioner.
David Gudelunas is the first
male director of the Gender,
Women and Sexuality program,
previously known as Women's
Studies. He is also an associate
professor in the communication
department as well as a pub-lished
author. Gudelunas will
soon be the chair of the commu-nications
department.
Karen Donoghue was the
first female FUSA president and
a member of the class of 2003.
She majored in Business Man-agement
and Communication.
She is currently the Dean of Stu-dents
overseeing ResLife and
New Student Programs.
Patricia Behre was the first
female managing editor of the
Yale Daily News. She is an as-
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