Teddy Segmuller, a senior on Manhattan College women's swimming and diving team, speaks about her journey as a Black student-athlete and her role in advocating for Black student-athletes throughout her swimming career.
Teddy helped start Help 2 Others, an organization that raised more than $6,000 for sixth graders who don’t have access to food during school breaks. Now, as a senior at Manhattan, she serves as vice president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).
“The whole source of SAAC and the whole motivation of SAAC is to use our voice as student-athletes to help better the student-athlete experience as a whole,” she said.
As the only Black student-athlete on the women’s team, Teddy says she sees it “more as an opportunity to grow the sport, and being a strong Black female student-athlete, I take pride in that.”
This is why Teddy constantly found herself involved in community events. She believed SAAC was “an avenue I wanted to pursue to help me get my foot in the door with the athletic department and just have them see the sport of swimming a little more closely.”
During her junior year as diversity chair for SAAC, Teddy participated in a project celebrating Black History Month. The initiative focused on the importance of Black health and wellness. Teddy asked the community, ‘How do you lead a healthy life through wellness?’. A word cloud was created with the gathered responses and hung in the school’s alumni room. Teddy felt it was essential to further educate others on the importance of Black History Month with the community project.
