Fresh from a leadership summit, four Williston women are bringing new ideas on leadership and empowerment back to campus with the goal of spreading their skills and knowledge to their fellow student-athletes.

Juniors Mia Daley, Addie Eakin, Addison Perich, and Riley Stocker attended the 2026 Girls in Sports Leadership Summit on April 11. During the event, the group went to panels and workshops, heard from guest speakers, and sat for a keynote speech, all with the goal of celebrating and inspiring female athletes and fostering their growth as leaders on the fields, courts, and rinks of their respective schools.

Held at Cushing Academy, the summit featured a keynote address from Haley Moore Kotyk, a 2004 Cushing alum who, after playing hockey at Brown University and serving as the Vice President of Hockey Operations for the American Hockey League, is now the Senior Agent and Director of Women’s Hockey at Quartexx, a talent management firm.

Daley, who plays on the varsity ice hockey team, was impressed by Kotyk’s presentation. Equally as impactful, she said, was a panel featuring another esteemed, accomplished, and successful student-athlete, Kennedy Walker, with whom Daley will eventually share a campus.

Walker, currently in her first year at Yale University, was on a panel that resonated with Daley’s desire to serve as a leader to her own younger teammates next year. (Daley is committed to Yale; she’ll be a first year when Walker is a junior.)

“It was cool to reconnect with her,” said Daley, who skated in the same circles as Kennedy for the past few years; Daley is from Lynnfield, Mass., while Walker is from Middleton, Mass. Both skate at the Woburn Holland Hockey Academy in the summers and were a few years apart on the East Coast Wizards, the club team out of Bedford, Mass.

Kennedy, in addition to her inspiring message of perseverance and how to prepare to be a good leader, encouraged Daley to make connections among the other summit attendees, which she did.

Jade Morris, Williston’s Athletic Director, said that element of the conference is often just as important as the workshops.

“It’s the perfect opportunity for students to hear from female leaders and peers on best practices, what works, and what doesn’t work,” said Morris. Getting aspiring leaders together reaffirms that there is a community of supportive peers among schools, she said.

This is exactly what Daley’s fellow attendee Addison Perich found. Perich, a three-sport varsity athlete in soccer, lacrosse, and squash, said commiserating with fellow student-athletes was a tangible and reassuring benefit of the summit.

“It was really nice being able to meet girls that we’re competing against and share our own experiences throughout sports,” said Addison. “It was interesting to see how similar a lot of us were.”

Riley Stocker agreed.

“It was great to see a lot of wonderful, strong women in one room,” said Stocker, a varsity athlete in ice hockey, field hockey, and lacrosse. “The speaker was great and really taught us to never take no for an answer, and [that] you can be the first women to do anything. Being there with people from all different schools … you really felt the sense of sisterhood.”

Another workshop the Williston women attended focused on establishing a strong team culture was run by Erin Fisher, the current Pomfret girls varsity soccer coach. At her workshop, Fisher spread the message that “how you do one thing is how you do everything,” which resonates with Daley, Stocker, and Perich. Fisher also discusses setting team standards and holding one another to them, as well as establishing core values by which all athletes on a team abide.

It stuck with Daley, who hopes to follow in the skates of those who’ve inspired her at Williston.

“I want to be a leader,” she said. “I feel like so many good leaders have entered my life and I want to give back what they’ve given me. I’ve learned so much from other people.”

Daley spoke specifically about Caroline Aufiero, the hockey captain when Daley was in ninth grade.

“She was a really good role model from me,” Daley said. “She introduced me to Williston hockey and was super welcoming. She held me to my highest standard, made me a better player and person, and I want to do the same for other people.”

Daley said her own leadership ambition is spurred on as well by Monique Lyons, a 2024 Williston alum and now a sophomore at Brown.

“She would do extra skates with me,” Daley said, noting that when she was a “nervous ninth grader settling into a new role,” Lyons took her under her wing.

Sending Wildcat women to the Cushing conference, and then learning from them upon their return, is a win-win for Williston sports as a whole, said Morris.

On the drive back to Williston, Morris said “the girls emailed me saying, ‘Can we meet, we had such a great time at the conference and want to talk about some idea to bring back to Williston.’”

Morris added that, from her perspective, “It’s really important to give them these opportunities to grow outside the classroom with tangible leaderships skills they’re going to bring back.”

One of those tangible programs is starting a Student Athlete Advisory Committee, common in collegiate programs, said Morris, who came to Williston from the Boston College athletics department, but not yet at the high school level.

The lessons learned at the leadership summit extend beyond sports, as well, as Perich and Stocker realized when they attended a workshop on creating boundaries to reduce burnout. Among other strategies, the workshop taught Perich, who has already begun the college process, breathing techniques to use in everyday life.

“Because I’m a junior, it kind of helps me to understand people are going through a tough time, and it’s a normal thing to take a break sometimes,” she said.

Perich left feeling the importance of enjoying the game in the moment. And beyond sports, she said she learned sometimes it’s necessary to “just take a deep breath and realize there are people you can rely on.”

Stocker noted the “backpack analogy,” which advised student athletes on the importance of “filling your backpack/day with your priorities and drop the ones you don’t need.”

Like Perich, Stocker noted that the summit encouraged her to “be present in the moment, because it goes by fast,” as well as not to compare herself to others, to “meet people where they are at,” and that “captains don’t always need to be perfect.”