With Bishop O’Dowd’s full return to on-campus learning, a new form of school leadership welcomed us back to athletics with a fall sports rally, games, chants, and recognition for each fall sport. A group of O’Dowd senior athletes from a range of sports collectively organized these events. They are formally known as the Student-Athlete Leadership Team, or, in simpler terms, SALT. In hopes of getting to know the leadership group better, I was fortunate enough to sit down and interview with one of SALT’s leaders, Marianne Tanner.

Marianne played varsity tennis for 4 years and varsity softball for 3 years at O’Dowd and will be graduating in the spring of 2022. She is 1 of the 15 members of SALT. In our recent interview, Marianne explained that SALT represents student-athletes on campus. Their objective is to unify relationships across all sports and spread spirit around campus. They work on keeping students updated with all sporting events and focus on addressing issues within the athletic department. SALT is the first and, so far, only leadership group that supports the athletic department at O’Dowd, making them a unique and necessary addition to campus. They also actively collaborate with the Associated Student Body (ASB) on student spirit activities. An average day for a member of SALT consists of active engagement on all media, whether that is posting an upcoming game on  Instagram or making announcements on the loudspeakers. 

Marianne refers to SALT as an “informative team that combines aspects of all leadership groups and directly focuses on sports.” She also explained how SALT incorporates O’Dowd’s values for social justice with athletics, by addressing issues in the community such as lack of unity and diversity within sports. With O’Dowd’s level of competitiveness, she feels it is important to continue to raise awareness of these issues and for athletes to uplift one another.

Some of SALT’s future events will include seasonal sports rallies, sports appreciation week, themed outfits for game days, and hosting Senior Nights for the class of 2022 athletes. Instead of only focusing on the few main sports like football and basketball, Marianne expressed how she wants our community to support all games, no matter the sport, bringing the same energy and spirit to each and every game. At the end of the day, SALT represents all athletes. 

Concluding the interview, Marianne’s final words to incoming students were “Come join SALT!”