HANOVER — Casey Smerczynski graduated from Dartmouth College in June — remotely, she said recently, with a hint of regret — and she took a lot of things home with her to Massachusetts. Memories of a national women’s rugby championship from two years ago, three Ivy League crowns and her new studio arts degree topped the pile.
Nothing proved more valuable, however, than the agenda books Big Green athletes get when they arrive on campus each year.
Smerczynski admitted she wouldn’t have been able to find time for everything in her life without one. Lately, that’s included illustrating and helping to self-publish a children’s book authored by retired Dartmouth classics professor Edward Bradley.
Smerczynski enjoyed working with Bradley particularly because she’d been previously unsuccessful in getting into one of his Latin classes, she said in a phone interview last week. Rugby set it all up.
“I’d heard he was one of the best, but I didn’t get in,” she said. “But the second chance I got to know him as a person, it was meant to be. He looked at a couple of other artists’ submissions and went with mine.
“It’s funny because the submission I sent him is nothing like the end result is. Funny how that works out, but we had a really good collaboration.”
Speaking from his White River Junction home, Bradley said his intent for Chouetty to the Rescue was to write something for his two youngest grandchildren. The book tells of a benevolent owl vacationing in Vermont with a 9-year-old French boy, a lifelong companion, when Chouetty comes to the aid of a distressed squirrel that has lost its mate.
A rugby teammate initially notified Smerczynski of Bradley’s need for an illustrator. His story — which Bradley first wrote in French before deciding to seek publication in English — and Smerczynski’s art came together over the span of about two years.
“Here’s a kid who does Dartmouth proud as she does herself proud,” Bradley said. “She’s the kind of student of whom one dreams. She’s seriously committed to her academic work and has had a very full and deeply satisfying life as a member of a team. Kids learn to make the fastest, deepest friendships not in a classroom but on a field.”
That field sometimes produces surprise opportunity.
Smerczynski said her parents insisted she and her brothers play a sport a season as they grew up; she gravitated toward volleyball, basketball and track, although the latter wasn’t necessarily a favorite. That changed prior to her junior spring at Masconomet Regional High School when she saw a flyer for the Essex County Bulldogs club rugby program.
“It was the best experience ever,” she said. “They were completely underfunded, barely had a head coach, but it changed my whole perspective. It’s hard work; (you learn) what it feels like to get hit by a 200-pound girl. Rugby changes the body-image issues that women experience in high school. I was so much happier going to school; I had to drive an hour and a half to practice in the rain, and it was the best thing to look forward to in the worst circumstances.”
It also opened the door to Dartmouth. Where she had envisioned herself maybe playing club volleyball somewhere, Smerczynski instead ended up as a recruited lock — a forward position that includes mid-pack responsibilities in scrums — with the Big Green, who committed to varsity play in 2015. Dartmouth won three Ivy League championships in her four years and claimed the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association crown in 2018.
As her opportunity to head north for school came suddenly, so did her decision to switch her major from geography to studio arts late in her junior year. A low-tech fountain pen, ink and paper are Smerczynski’s preferred tools, but she’s also developing an interest in computer animation, enough to help a Dartmouth friend with an ongoing film project.
Smerczynski inundated herself with film as a senior (“I put myself in every class I could get into”) and it may be her future. She is applying to graduate film programs at both Columbia and Southern California while she works in human resources recruiting for Amazon. Animation, she said, is a way of getting her foot in the door. Her illustration skills may also come in handy professionally.
Bradley is writing a letter of recommendation for her. He compares the experience to a Russian nesting doll in reverse — the more he learns about his partner in storytelling, the bigger and better his impression becomes.
Bradley asked Smerczynski to oversee self-publication this summer while he was home recuperating from an injury. As rugby players do, she picked up the ball and ran with it.
“I don’t want to be extravagant in praise, but she offers for me the Dartmouth dream, when Dartmouth used to say it made possible the realization of a fine education for student-athletes as athletes and students,” said Bradley, who is also a longtime academic adviser for the Big Green men’s hockey program.
“From my experience, there are two parallel careers and, more often than not, athletics takes more time and more discipline and the academic is a necessary parallel. … Casey is the opposite.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.