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Rolandelli Named Sarah Devens Award Winner
4/14/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Ice Hockey
ALBANY, N.Y. – Brown women's hockey senior Alli Rolandelli has been named the winner of the 2016 Sarah Devens Award as announced by the ECAC on Thursday. The honor is given as a joint award between ECAC Hockey and Hockey East, and is presented annually to a player who "demonstrates leadership and commitment both on and off the ice." The winner also receives a post-graduate scholarship of $10,000.
The award is named in honor of former Dartmouth Big Green ice hockey player, Sarah Devens, who died in 1995 prior to her senior year. Rolandelli is the second Bear student-athlete to receive the Sarah Devens Award, as Christina Sorbara '01 was selected as the 2001 recipient.
A two-year captain, Rolandelli showed exemplary leadership and sportsmanship as a member of the women's ice hockey team for the past four years. Rolandelli made an instant impact as an incoming freshman in 2012-13 and was chosen by her peers to receive the team's Greatest Teammate Award and again earned the honor as a sophomore. As a junior, Rolandelli was the only non-senior to be chosen as an assistant captain en route to earning the team's Chelsea McMillian Award for pride and perseverance. Also in her third year, Rolandelli was a finalist for Brown's Derek Canfield Barker Prize. The principle of the prize is to recognize students at Brown who have shown qualities of leadership, who have triumphed over adversity and who have worked to bring the Brown community together through community service. For the 2015-16 season, Rolandelli dressed as one of the team's co-captains and was named a finalist for the 2016 BNY Mellon Wealth Management Hockey Humanitarian Award. Following the season, the Greatest Teammate Award will be renamed the Alison Rolandelli Best Teammate Award.
During her freshman and sophomore year, Rolandelli and the Brown women's hockey team paired up with Team Impact and welcomed Angelica Negron, a six-year-old girl who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, to the Brown Hockey family. Rolandelli was chosen as the team liaison to work closely with Team Impact and the Negron family to ensure Angelica was enjoying her experience as a Brown Bear. Over the course of the program the team raised over $6,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
The native of Minnetonka, Minnesota has also volunteered weekly for the past four years at the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School in Providence, R.I., interacting with first grade students by helping them with schoolwork and sharing her experiences as a student and a collegiate athlete.
Within the sport of hockey, Rolandelli volunteered as a skating coach for the Rhode Island Special Hockey Program, working with children and young adults with developmental disabilities and teaching them to skate.
Another hockey community organization Rolandelli works with is the Rhode Island Sting Hockey Program. Once a month for the past four years, Rolandelli and a few teammates run a practice for the Rhode Island Sting.
Rolandelli's main community service project is her partnership with the Love Your Melon Foundation. The Love Your Melon Foundation is an apparel brand that gives a hat to every child battling cancer in America, funds childhood cancer research initiatives, and provides immediate support for children and their families. Inspired by the foundations mission, Rolandelli brought Love Your Melon to Brown in May of 2015 when she started the Brown University Love Your Melon Campus Crew. She chose the organization due to personal ties, as her mother passed away from cancer in 2014.
Under the leadership of Rolandelli, Brown's campus crew has raised over $6,500 for the foundation. Aside from raising money, the Brown Crew visits children at their homes and at local hospitals building relationships by playing games and socializing, taking their minds off of the illness. Rolandelli coordinates events and communicates the plan to everyone in the campus crew.
The underlying story is that all of this would not have been possible without Rolandelli's persistence. Originally the NCAA would not allow student-athletes to participate in Love Your Melon due to NCAA rules banning student-athletes from selling commercial products. Rolandelli worked hand-in-hand with the compliance office at Brown to allow all student-athletes the right to participate with the organization. A waiver was initiated to the NCAA and the organization was approved not just for Rolandelli but all NCAA student-athletes to participate in. Through her hard work and dedication to making this possible, the Love Your Melon organization has seen a tremendous increase in school involvement with many institutions joining since the waiver was passed.
Rolandelli's community work is not only done in Rhode Island but also at home in Minnesota, where she volunteers in the summer at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, visiting children who are battling various illnesses. She has volunteered over 130 hours at the hospital. She also worked at the University of Minnesota Visible Heart Lab, conducting cardiac research.
Academically, Rolandelli is concentrating in Health and Human Biology at Brown. Throughout her four years, Rolandelli has been able to balance her leadership role within the team along with an abundance of extra curricular activities, all while successfully managing the workload of an Ivy League institution.
Aspiring to be a dentist, Rolandelli has worked hand-in-hand with oral surgeons, orthodontists, and general dentists. For her thesis at Brown, Rolandelli is working with the Rhode Island Department of Public Health researching the causal link between poor dental health and overall health with a micro focus on low socioeconomic communities. Rolandelli aims to improve dental health for those who are not receiving the dental care they require. As part of her thesis, she works along side with local dentists, helping conduct free dental exams to underserved children in Rhode Island. Rolandelli is also a member of the Pre-Dental Society at Brown.
After graduation and before going to dental school to become a dentist, Rolandelli plans on taking a year off to work with the Love Your Melon Foundation or the American Cancer Society.
For the complete ECAC release, click here.
Past recipients of the Sarah Devens Award
1997 -- Kathryn Waldo, (F), Northeastern
1998 -- Sarah Hood, (F), Dartmouth
1999 -- Jamie Totten, (D), Northeastern
2000 -- Carrie Jokiel, (F), New Hampshire
2001 – Christina Sorbara, (F), Brown
2002 -- Dianna Bell, (F), Cornell
2003 -- Rachel Barrie, (G), St. Lawrence
2004 -- Lindsay Charlebois, (F), St. Lawrence
2005 – Nicole Corriero, (F), Harvard
2006 -- Karen Thatcher, (F), Providence
2007 – Lindsay Williams, (F), Clarkson
2008 -- Lizzie Keady, (F), Princeton
2009 – Marianna Locke, (F), St. Lawrence
2010 -- Laura Gersten, (F), Rensselaer
2011 – Jackee Snikeris, (G), Yale
2012 -- Aleca Hughes, (F), Yale
2013 -- Alyssa Zupon, (F), Yale
2014 -- Vanessa Gagnon (F), Clarkson
2015 -- Chelsea Laden, (G), Quinnipiac
2016 -- Alli Rolandelli, (D), Brown
