Friday, August 4, 2017

Meet Our Captains

Smith Tennis is ready to gear up for the fall of 2017.  Leading the charge will be Samantha Peikes and Joanna Kim.  Both veterans to the Smith team and we look forward to their leading the 2017-2018 Smith College Tennis Team.

Samantha Peikes
Samantha Peikes:
I am Sam one of the captains for the Smith College tennis team. I am from West Hartford, Connecticut, but I have been spending my summer in Delaware working for a Marine Research and Rehabilitation Institute in addition to working as a fellow for Our Climate, which mobilizes college students to put a price on carbon as a response to combating climate change. I was studying abroad last semester in the tropical rainforests of far northeast Queensland, Australia. It was an incredible and unforgettable experience, but I am eager to get back on the courts to play the sport that I love so much. 

Joanna Kim
Joanna Kim:
I'm a neuroscience major with a Chemistry and History minor
I'm from Chicago, IL and I know a lot of random facts, yet I'm terrible at trivia 
I had a summer internship at NASA Ames, Mountain View CA researching how deep space affects our bodies. There seems to be one, overarching goal for NASA: go to Mars. That's at least 6-8 months of space travel, and we don't know how or to what extent cosmic radiation or microgravity affects our bodies. My project specifically looks at how our eyesight worsens because of microgravity - it's hypothesized that Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) localizes in our heads without gravity to centralize it. CSF applies pressure to the back of the eye and optic nerve, causing the back of the retina to flatten, which is causing astronauts to come back far-sighted when they had perfect vision pre-flight.   I am very eager for the Smith tennis season to begin.