Our Champions

Julia Fleming

You can learn a lot about SUNY Cortland junior Julia by starting with one of the loves of her life: ice hockey.

She began playing the sport almost as soon as she could walk and continued through youth leagues and school teams in her hometown of Grand Island, N.Y., near Buffalo.

As a kid, college hockey was a dream, and it came true when she chose Cortland over several other colleges that recruited her. Now she’s a playmaking forward on the Red Dragons women’s team. “Being a college athlete means a great deal to me,” she says. “You sacrifice a lot, but I love it.”

But it isn’t just the athletic side of Julia that hockey has helped shape. In high school she got a backstage tour of HSBC Arena, where the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres play. Staff there showed her how they piece together game tapes and highlight reels. She thought it was pretty cool.

So cool, in fact, that when she got to Cortland, she picked new communication media for her major with a computer applications minor. In class, Julia has built websites, gotten comfortable on both sides of the camera and become fluent with a wide range of high-tech communication equipment and software programs.

For an audio production class, Julia broke down the Queen song “Bohemian Rhapsody” into 25 different tracks and then put it back together with a techno slant. The skills she’s gaining with high-tech tools will give her a decided edge when she enters the workplace.

“My major is awesome,” Julia says. “It’s one of the best things I could have done.”

She’s confident that her major is giving her exactly what she needs to launch her career. “My dream job is to work in video production for the New York Rangers,” Julia says, which begs the question: The Rangers? What happened to the Sabres? “To work at Madison Square Garden would be unbelievable,” she explains.

“Being a member of the ice hockey team has taught me how to contribute in working toward a common goal,” Julia says.