Each year, Pomona College welcomes new and returning student-athletes to campus to continue their college careers as proud Sage Hens.
New fall schedules include soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, women’s volleyball, men’s water polo and men’s and women’s soccer.
Three student-athletes currently in season reflect on what drew them to Pomona, how they balance academic and athletic responsibilities, and what they plan to do when their collegiate days are over.
Savannah Cespedes ’26, Women’s Volleyball
Savannah Cespedes is interested in the relationship between the brain and the body. As a volleyball player recovering from major knee surgery, she sees firsthand how complicated those relationships can be.
Cespedes, a neuroscience major from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is back practicing with his teammates and regaining strength in his knee nearly a year after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament last October. But “this is the mind-muscle connection” that I’m still rebuilding,” she says.
“I can see my brain responding faster than my body at the moment,” she added. “You see certain things and your brain tells you to move, but your body doesn’t want to move.”
As one of four team captains this season, Cespedes will share the responsibility of putting his teammates in the best position for success. She is inching closer to returning to competition and credits Pomona’s athletic trainers and others for helping her recover from her first major injury.
“The first month after surgery was one of the toughest months of my life,” she says. โIt was really painful for me to have my independence and all my power taken away, but my parents, friends and team were invaluable to me.โ
โThe team meant a lot to me, so getting through those difficult days was important not only to me but to them as well.โ
Cespedes earned his EMT certification this summer as he recovered from surgery. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in physician assistant studies with the goal of being able to provide life-saving assistance when called upon.
At Pomona College, Cespedes is one of the Pomona Science Scholars. These students are a small group of students who meet every week to check on class progress. Mr. Cespedes also finds time to mentor junior students interested in pre-health science fields.
โPomona is a great place to be because of the facultyโs compassion, empathy, and support, not just for the student-athletes, but for the entire student body,โ she says. โI have never felt so supported both outside and inside the classroom.โ
Joseph Cox ’25, Men’s Cross Country
As a long-distance runner, Joseph Cox notices the beauty in the world around him. As a 3D animator, he builds worlds for others to see.
โWhen you work on a documentary, a lot of times you start building the world once you get the footage,โ Cox says. โBut with 3D animation, you create everything from scratch, so every item throughout the process has to be placed in context.โ
Cox, a media studies major and a senior on the men’s cross country team, balances his curiosity in the classroom with his responsibilities as a runner. During this past track season, the Austin, Texas, native was asked by a friend and fellow distance runner to animate an ichthyosaur from a photo scan with the help of Claremont McKenna College professor Lars Schmitz. .
Over the summer, Cox not only animated the dinosaurs, but also created an underwater environment using fluid simulations that accurately reacted to the ichthyosaurs moving in and out of the water. He also created period-specific corals and vegetation specific to shallow and deep sea.
โIn a way, it was like a story,โ he says. โBut it was all-encompassing.โ
As big a field as 3D animation is, Cox wants to focus his expertise on modeling, texturing, or compositing. His strengths lie in modeling and texturing, and he can be seen creating detailed worlds in video games and movies.
He says there are two routes for 3D animation, each with its own North Star to guide the way.
Pixar movies show what can be achieved with 3D animation alone, Cox said, but the digital backgrounds for big-budget superhero movies and TV shows have another use case: 3D compositing. It is said that it shows.
Cox felt that Pomona’s media studies program would help prepare her for either path.
โI donโt know exactly where 3D work is going to take me,โ he says. โBut I would love to do 3D animation in movies and other types of media.โ
Anjali Nagehari ’26, Women’s Soccer
When Anjali Ngehari came to Pomona, she expected to be close with her teammates on the field. She never expected to do the same with a professor or other student in the computer science department.
โUntil I got to Pomona, I didnโt realize there were opportunities for socialization and bonding in STEM departments,โ said Nuggehalli, a double major in computer science and political science. โWhen you talk to people at large schools, especially in STEM departments, most of the time they go to lectures in front of hundreds of kids, do their assignments, turn their students in, and that’s it.โ
Inspired by her upperclassmen, Nagehari became a computer science liaison and fostered relationships with faculty and colleagues while playing for one of the premier Division III women’s soccer programs in the country.
“If you’re passionate about something, you’ll make time for it,” she says. “The only thing that matters is understanding what’s important to you. After all, you can’t do everything. Knowing what you want to work on is the first step to success, and then You rely on the support system around you.โ
Over the summer, Nuggehalli interned as a Women in Sports Tech Fellow in the Business Innovation and Data Analytics Department at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Much of the work, which included identifying historical trends in women’s medal counts, building models to predict future medal numbers, and examining fan engagement with women’s track and field, was done remotely, but Nagehari worked remotely at Colorado State University. He visited Team USA’s training center and rubbed elbows with top players. Both coaches and athletes.
A native of Saratoga, Calif., Nagehari remains drawn to a career in sports technology and hopes to continue exploring the field professionally while in Pomona.
โEveryone here has a passion for learning, which makes them not only go to class to get good grades, but also come out of school a more well-rounded and educated person. โI started wanting to feel like that,โ she says.