Senior Profile: Hanna Hawkins
Madison Giles, Staff Writer
Courtesy of nguathletics.com
For senior, Hanna Hawkins, this is her eighth year playing lacrosse. She plays attack on the North Greenville University women’s lacrosse team.
She was raised in Florida until third grade and then moved to South Carolina. Hawkins said she had the normal childhood life, she went to school and played with friends growing up.
Hawkins started playing lacrosse her freshman year of high school and continued to play throughout all of her college career.
In high school, Hawkins was named “Most Improved in 2012,” and as a junior was selected into the National Team for South Carolina. She was also in first team all state and the first team all upper state selection.
Hawkins led the team her freshman year at NGU in points with 31 goals and five assists. She collected 19 ground balls, 15 draw controls, and eight caused turnovers. In 2016, Hawkins earned team offensive player of the year.
Hawkins is majoring in sports management with a coaching emphasis. She is doing an internship this summer at Southern Wesleyan University. She hopes to volunteer coaching in the fall, get into game day operations and hopefully get an assistant coaching position.
She has had many great experiences since coming to school at NGU. Hawkins explained that she chose to come to North Greenville because of the people, the environment and the mountains.
She described her four years at NGU as a “roller coaster.” Hawkins said, “it’s had its highs and it’s had its lows.”
Hawkins said her favorite memories at NGU are building new relationships and growing in her relationship with God. For lacrosse, being the first person in program history to score 100 career goals. Her least favorite part was getting sick, and then having to adjust to the cafeteria food again.
For Hawkins the most exciting part about playing lacrosse has been getting to play and experience it with Sydney Taylor. “She’s the life of the party, she makes everybody laugh and she’s the best DJ.” Hawkins and Taylor started playing lacrosse together as freshman in high school and get to finish their college career together.
For Hawkins being a student athlete is all about keeping a good schedule. “I personally am better at staying busy,” says Hawkins, “I am also a scheduler and a planner, so I have practice set out ahead of time and when I stay busy, I work in school better and work at practice better.”
The most exciting part about graduating for Hawkins is looking forward to the future, “seeing what opportunities are going to unfold and what doors that God is going to open.”
Since being at NGU, Hawkins has learned many pieces of advice from being in college. Hawkins said “I’ve learned that if you want to build a relationship it’s a two-way street, you both have to put forth the effort because otherwise if you are putting in all the effort you are going to get tired.” She said she has learned to keep moving forward and to not let things keep you angry or bring you down.
