Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is well known for its rigorous academic environment. However, for hundreds of students who compete across the Engineers' 21 NCAA teams, schoolwork goes hand in hand with sports. Last week, The Polytechnic sat down with Sofia Cedrone and Kacey Pritts, student-athletes on the women's lacrosse team, to discuss their experiences balancing academics and athletics.
“I chose RPI because I wanted a school that had a good balance of athletics and academics, and I feel like that's the answer that everybody always gives,” says Cedrone, a defender for the women’s lacrosse team. Born and raised in Maryland, a hotbed for women’s lacrosse, Cedrone was drawn to the sport due to the “dynamic” and “fast-paced” nature. Now a senior, Cedrone chose RPI to pursue a degree in Aerospace Engineering.
“[RPI] is a golden exception where you can still play athletics at a collegiate level, but then have your engineering degree, and that's not really something that you can do anywhere else.”
Pritts feels the same. A Rockland County native, Pritts began playing lacrosse in kindergarten, joined her local travel team in third grade, and hasn’t looked back since. After RPI’s coach noticed her at a Division III showcase, Pritts’ interest in STEM made Rensselaer an appealing choice. As a freshman, these expectations are beginning to be realized. “It’s going pretty good. I like having a more rigid schedule where…I know that I need to get stuff done either in the morning or later at night.”
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The rigidity that comes with being a student-athlete has been a benefit for both Cedrone and Pritts. “Lacrosse actually helps because you have a set three to four hours a day that you know are going to be taken up by lacrosse, so it's much easier to structure everything,” explains Cedrone. “You don't have that free time where you can tell yourself, Oh, I'm just going to sit around. I don't need to do it yet. It's: oh, I have to do it now.”
Of course, things don’t always go to plan. “It's not as if you’re doing 50 percent athletics and 50 percent academics. Some days you are all student, some days you’re all athlete. Some days you’re just trying to cobble things together,” Cedrone — who earned All-Academic Team honors in 2025 — acknowledges. Cedrone recalls her first year at RPI, “I definitely hit that learning curve as a freshman, but I think that's where I had the most growth, because I learned a new way to study, and I learned a new way to approach my classes, and a new way to dedicate all of my time here.”
Despite this, the rigors and obstacles help student-athletes hone their time management skills and bounce back in challenging courses. Cedrone mentioned that it seems as though student-athletes during their sport’s season have a higher GPA. Pritts — an Information Technology and Web Sciences and Business Management dual major — also noted that office hours remain a valuable asset for students: “I went to office hours, and it changed my understanding and helped me improve [my grade].”
Both players highlighted the importance of team culture. Pritts remembers that “from the start, [the team] told us to own your space, that you deserve to be here. Even in the fall, they’d be like, Oh, you jump in here. You go in this role, even if they’re explaining a drill... Any one of the freshmen could jump in and be in that spot to start off the drill.”
Cedrone agrees that RPI doesn’t share the same ‘pecking order’ that larger Division I programs may employ. “As soon as our freshmen show up, they’re immediately expected to be contributing…because they’re not just supposed to sit on the sidelines. They’re automatically a part of the team.”
The focus on team chemistry complements the relatively smaller, tight-knit team. “We’re a smaller team, and it gives us more reps, more playing time. You're going to see the field a little bit more, but it's also an opportunity for everybody to step up and find their place.” This was critical for Pritts to achieve what she describes as her “breakthrough moment,” where she solidified her place on the team. “We did this drill over and over again, and I just felt so confident, and that set the tone for the rest of the fall going into now…I need to have confidence and know that you can do this and trust yourself.”
Pritts translated this confidence into back-to-back Liberty League Rookie of the Week awards, where she scored nine goals and fifteen assists within a four-game span. “As an attacker, I just go into every game wanting to help out my team in any way that I can. I would say that I assist a lot, and that's something that I enjoy doing…I tell [my teammates], if you cut for me, I'll pass to you.” She attributes this to her two-goal, five-assist stat line against Swarthmore.
As of writing, the Engineers find themselves in a four-way tie for fifth place in their Liberty League conference. As the team readies for the final stretch of games to clinch qualification to the conference playoffs, the team has had the chance to identify what's been going well and what needs to be refined. “Mostly just coming out of lulls and coming out of momentum shifts,” says Cedrone. “That’s been our Achilles heel this whole season, as soon as one thing starts going wrong or things aren’t going our way, we tend to deflate.”
Winning the intensity game is vital for the team, and Pritts mentioned that the Engineers have been working on rallying the team during deficits. “If we get into a lull, we have stuff that we're doing to get out of that. Our encouragement for each other is always very, very strong. When the goalie makes a save, everyone's cheering. Someone gets a ground ball. Everyone's cheering. We celebrate everything, because everything is a win.”
With the end of the semester approaching, both Cedrone and Pritts have been looking towards the future.
Cedrone is graduating and moving to California to work at a solar solutions company thanks in part to the RPI Athletics outreach network, but also in large part to RPI’s academic environment. “One thing that RPI does a really good job of is forcing you to remember what you've done in your last classes and your new classes… cementing it in your brain and then threading it through with this new application. That's what helped me get where I am now, because your employers can see that you're willing to put in the extra effort, you're willing to put in the extra time, and that you don't need as much guidance, because you can think critically and think independently.”
While the lacrosse scene in California isn’t quite as big as it is in the Northeast, Cedrone will still be in contact with the team as an alumnus in lacrosse’s Leadership Council. She hopes to focus on “[reaching] back out to the people that I played with” and “making sure that interest is up.”
Pritts, meanwhile, hopes to continue her stellar freshman year. As of writing, she leads the team with 38 points and has accounted for over a third of the team’s assists. You can see Cedrone and Pritts play on April 25th when they return to Troy to face Rochester Institute of Technology in the Engineers’ regular-season finale.
