Smith is a jack, and master, of all trades

Aesop, a Greek fabulist and storyteller, once said “Good things come in small packages.” He might’ve been referring to Kinsey Smith.

Kinsey Smith, 21, junior of Windsor, Colorado, or “Kevin” to her close friends and teammates has a strong presence across campus, partaking in two athletic programs at CSC and being executive members of two clubs on campus.

“Golf came into my life when I was like 10 years old,” Smith said. “I’ve always been around it, but I’ve never wanted to play it until we moved to a golf course community, and they had a bunch of kids camps. So, I decided that I wanted to try it out and it was super fun.”

It wasn’t until high school when she got serious about golf. While in high school, she was a two-time team state champion and finished seventh in back-to-back state tournaments.

Her interest in the sport continued with her to college when she joined the women’s golf team at Chadron State College and reached her own successes.

“I think it’s affected my life positively in many ways because it has given me mental toughness and taught me how to be positive in all sorts of situations, whether it’s on the golf course or off,” she said.

Along with positivity and mental toughness, Smith has finished her 2019-20 season with a season best in eighth during the Winona State Invite in Las Vegas, and in 2020-21 she tied for 41st at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships in Litchfield Park, Arizona.

“It was always super fun and I have always treated it as something that I want to keep as something fun in my life, not ever work or a burden or anything like that. I think that’s been important.”

But this season, she was able to win a golf tournament, the Warrior Invitational, March 7-8, two days after she wrestled in Nationals.

Smith said that her interest in wrestling sprung up through yearbook assignments in high school and after the first time she “just fell in love with just watching it.”

“It was so cool to me,” she said. “I always thought, ‘you know, this is something I would’ve been interested in if I had the opportunity when I was younger to join like a girl’s wrestling team or something like that.’”

A year after she graduated high school, women’s wrestling was added to the school district and Smith thought at first she had missed her chance. Little did she know, a few years later, CSC announced the addition of their own women’s wrestling program, giving her the opportunity that she always wanted.

She was able to wrestle on a team of eight members in the 101-pound weight class and she was one of the four Eagles to book herself a ticket to the NCWWC National Championships, making history as a member of the program’s first year.

On top of being a two-sport athlete in college, Smith has taken on the responsibility of being the marketing coordinator of The Big Event and a co-advertising director for The Eagle.

Being the marketing coordinator for The Big Event, she handled social media, helped plan different promotional events and made different promotional items like posters and lanyards, helped design t-shirts, talked to people to coordinate things, and visited job sites with other staff members to make sure each location was safe.

She made history once again by being a staff member during the 10-year anniversary of The Big Event.

“I was super happy with how The Big Event went this year,” Smith said. “I think it went pretty smoothly. We had a lot of first year staff members on our staff this year, and they just did a great job. So, it was super cool to see how they picked things up really quickly.”

With meetings once a week since the beginning of the school year, sometimes more, there weren’t many hiccups since the planning put into the event this year seemed to pay off.

With The Eagle, she has been able to put her business major into use before even leaving college when Mr. Kennedy, The Eagle’s faculty adviser, extended the offer her freshman year then to her friend Andrew Avila, 21, junior of Henry, the next year, and the two took on the role of advertising director together.

“I’ve learned to make sales for ads and that’s been great. I’ve also learned how to create actual ads, so using InDesign is something that I feel like I’m going to be able to do for the rest of my life. It’s just been a great experience to be in the newsroom but not on like the journalist side. Like, I get to be on the outside looking in but then also a part of it, so, I like that.”

With everything she’s in, Smith also usually takes on a 15-credit class load most semesters, but she has experienced some burnout with her busy schedule. To handle that burnout, she has a strategy of reminding herself why she likes each thing she does, time management and asks friends for help when needed.

“If it’s something that I’m not having fun with anymore, then I’m not going to do it obviously,” She said. “But I love all of these things so I’m gonna keep going and I just remind myself why I started. I’m able to stay focused on a task for a while and then like switch to another one and focus on that. If I’m not focused anymore, I let myself take breaks and I think that’s super important too.

“I have balance. It’s not all work all the time. I do fun things as well. Then I’ve learned also to ask for help if I need it. So, I have a lot of people supporting me and they can take some of the burdens away as well.”