An Ivy League Collegiate Athlete

Berit DeGrandpre is a high functioning kid. I would know. A few months back, Berit did an internship under me at the Lake County Leader. She has big plans, and recently, those plans started falling into place.

The Charlo senior is ivy league bound after being accepted into Dartmouth, a college that had a 10 percent acceptance rate this year. On top of that, she’s also officially a college athlete.

All of this is kind of new. Back in the fall of 2015 when I first met her, Berit was applying to some pretty prestigious schools.

Her dream of attending Dartmouth started when she was 16.

As a sophomore she participated in a program called WWAMI, a regional medical program that takes students from small communities and helps them get started in the medical field. “At the time I thought I wanted to go into pre-med,” she said.

She was paired up with a mentor, and eventually presented a project in Bozeman. Her mentor had gone to Dartmouth, which sparked Berit’s interest.

The next summer, on a trip to visit family on the East Coast, she and her parents went to visit the campus. Last summer she visited again.

Last September, Berit started the application process. Her application was deferred in December, but that didn’t slow her down. Over the next few months, she continued to bombard the school with essays and additional information, including a letter of recommendation from the editor of the Leader – me.

“Even after they deferred my application I kept sending them essays that weren’t required and told them I had improved my GPA, my class rank, I had taken an internship with the Leader, wrote three more essays and constantly showed them that I was improving myself and that they were the school for me,” she said.

Being driven is not an issue for Berit. She’s one of the most antsy people I have ever met. She knows it, and has adapted to it, which is what keeps her doing all of these things. Every summer, Berit has a new endeavor.

“A couple summers I went to the Missoula Children’s Theater camps, I used to be really involved in theater,” she said. “I think I started doing all these things during the summer because it’s really hard for me to sit still. So I would just get really involved in whatever I could find.”

Last summer, she went to the Phillips Exeter Academy, a ‘fancy prep school’ according to her. Also in New Hampshire, she said the experience was good for her. “It changed me quite a bit,” she said.

Jumping ahead to March 31 of this year, a very nervous Berit sat down at her computer after school. She knew that she would find out if she had been accepted to Dartmouth that afternoon.

“I wanted to be alone when I opened it because I didn’t want my reaction to scare anyone,” she said with a laugh. Her dad ended up standing at her shoulder for the big moment. “I clicked ‘open’ and right across the screen it said ‘congratulations’ and there were animated fireworks on the screen. It was awesome. Then I turned around and hugged my dad and started crying.”

Looking back, she could only think of one reason why they decided to pick her. “One thing I think helped was that my application showed a lot of heart because every essay that I sent them was my voice,” she said, “I feel like they looked at my application and thought ‘that kid showed a lot of heart.’ That’s the only thing I can think of that got me in.”

While all of this college stress was going on, Berit was also making another important decision for her senior year.

After playing softball since she was just a little tyke, she was thinking about giving it up to play rugby in Frenchtown. She sought advice on the decision from a lot of people, including me. I encouraged her to play softball for MAC and to not throw away the years of time she had spent in the sport.

Boy, how I was wrong. Berit picked rugby, and immediately caught on to the sport, which she had never played before. “After going to practices, there was just something about it,” she said of the decision. “Plus it’s the best sport ever invented.”

I suppose softball might have been a little tame for Berit. She loved softball but said, “There’s a lot of standing around. In rugby you just go as hard as you can all the time. It’s a beautiful thing.”

As it turns out, she’s pretty good. She was named to the all-star team, and let me tell you, I would not want to take a hit from her.

After being accepted into Dartmouth, she contacted the rugby coach there, and the rest is history.

She will head to the college a few weeks early to start practice as a collegiate rugby player. Not bad for a kid who hadn’t touched a ball before March.

“It’s 100 percent my sport – if I have one,” she said, “I want to do it as long as I possibly can. It seemed like playing at the college level was the right thing to do.”

I don’t think she will have a problem with having nothing to do at college.

“I’m going to have to learn some nice time management skills,” she said.

If it does get to be too much, Berit said her education will come first. “School is more important than rugby.”

That’s probably a good decision considering she plans to study economics and government with a minor in public policy. Oh, and maybe she will hit up law school afterward.

Berit credits her parents for getting her to where she is today. “My parents put a ton of pressure on me but really [the pressure] is from me. They know I have these crazy goals and they see that if I don’t work really hard I’m not going to get where I want to be. I think they apply the pressure so that I can get where I want to be.”

At 18, Berit has the maturity of a much older person. She excelled at the Leader during her time here, and in the last few months, has been accepted into multiple prestigious colleges, learned how to play rugby, became a collegiate athlete, and will graduate from Charlo High School on May 29.

Proud of you, kid.