Mackenzie O'Neill's initial experience with Missouri Western's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee came during her first semester on campus. It was field day, an annual event for student-athletes and coaches from all teams competing in a fun and unique environment. Think eating doughnuts off a string with no hands.
Before O'Neill knew it, she was one of her soccer team's representatives on the committee. She had no idea where it would take her, specifically to becoming the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association's representative on Division II SAAC. Or a year later, to be voted its vice chair.
It wasn't until someone suggested O'Neill apply to be the MIAA's representative that she even realized there was a structure of these student-athlete committees that built from the campus to the conference and national levels.
"I just connected so much with the mission at my campus that I just threw a lot of myself into that. I thought it was just this really cool thing we did at Missouri Western," she said, laughing. "So I researched (the national SAAC) a little bit more, applied, and from there I just fell even deeper in love with the program, the mission, the people especially, and now here I am."
In her third and final year on the committee, O'Neill was elected chair of Division II SAAC. In the role, she's trying to return her SAAC experience to her peers. O'Neill said that means empowering others — hopefully at in-person meetings rather than the virtual ones the committee has experienced the past 18 months — to bring what they are passionate about to Division II SAAC or to discover a new passion through new peer connections.
For her, that's been Team IMPACT, which she discovered because of SAAC. For nearly two years, she has served as a campus leader for the national organization, which matches children facing serious and chronic illnesses with a college athletics team.
For others, that discovery may be the Make-A-Wish Foundation (the division's partner) or something else entirely.
"I could talk about Team IMPACT for days, but … I feel like this committee offers a really unique opportunity to interact with so many different passion projects. So, as chair, how can I get more of those on the forefront?" said O'Neill, who graduated with a nursing degree this spring and is now working at a children's hospital in Louisiana. "How can I even provide just a helping hand wherever possible?
"Change can come from me, but I think change is more powerful when it comes from the whole group. I don't want to be the one speaking for all of SAAC, so how do we find ways to empower the committee?"
O'Neill (No. 3) played four seasons for Missouri Western and graduated with a nursing degree. Through her time in SAAC, she discovered another passion in Team IMPACT, which matches children facing serious and chronic illnesses with a college athletic team. (Photo courtesy of Missouri Western)
The committee is taking a similar approach with its overarching goal for the 2021-22 academic year, "The Total Package Student-Athlete." The campaign has three priorities: diversity and inclusion, professional development and mental health. Each priority has a subcommittee focusing on how to enhance it for the 122,000-plus Division II student-athletes.
Still, Division II SAAC keeps those efforts within each priority broad. It does so intentionally.
"We thought that was something that was maybe hurting us," O'Neill said. "But what we've seen is a shift in giving more control to the campus SAACs, which have an even bigger impact. We're just 20-some odd individuals from across the country (on Division II SAAC), but there are so many more of us."
The thought behind the approach is that while each of the three priorities is important across all of Division II, how they are implemented is going to look different at each school. The strategy aligns well with the division's "Make It Yours" tagline.
"We want our student-athletes to make our goals their own because that means they're interacting and connecting with what we have set out for them," O'Neill said.
Ideas, initiatives and resources related to these priorities are still shared through SAAC's communication network, which funnels from schools up to conferences to the national committee, and back down. Through this approach, there's collaboration across the division in areas of importance to its student-athletes.
"SAAC, in a lot of ways, is about empowerment and giving voice and presence," O'Neill said. "That is so unique because we connect with such a unique population of people: student-athletes."
Connecting the Division II student-athlete population is a priority especially important to Division II SAAC member Madeleine McKenna, the division's representative on the NCAA Constitution Committee. O'Neill said McKenna is a perfect fit for the role, which will include coordinating town hall meetings with student-athletes across the division to gather feedback.
"I'm very excited for her to have this role. When I heard she got it, I just lit up because I knew how wonderfully she was going to do in a room with all those people. That's just a testament to her character and her presence on our committee," O'Neill said of McKenna, a former volleyball player at California University of Pennsylvania. "I hope that other student-athletes will bring the same honesty, the same presence, and really just overall thinking about the big picture, and what do we want to get from this."
