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On April 23, Newton Country Day held a celebratory signing event for E. McCann ’24 and V. Floyd ’24, who will continue their academic and athletic careers at Middlebury College for field hockey and lacrosse and Smith College for rowing, respectively.
McCann started at Newton Country Day in seventh grade. While she started playing lacrosse in sixth grade for an outside league, her passion for field hockey began when she started playing at NCDS in eighth grade. She shared that her favorite NCDS athletics memory was a 2021 overtime win against Pingree School in the field hockey NEPSAC semifinals.
McCann was a three-season varsity athlete on the field hockey, lacrosse, and ice hockey teams for her four Upper School years. In the 2022-23 school year, she was awarded Most Valuable Athlete for lacrosse and named an EIL Honorable Mention and an All-NEPSAC player. In the 2023-24 school year, she was named Most Valuable Athlete for varsity field hockey, EIL Player of the Year/All-Scholastic, All-NEPSAC, and EIL All-League. She was the captain for field hockey in the fall and is the current lacrosse team captain.
When asked about the decision-making process behind committing to two sports, McCann shared, “I recognized that my passion for playing lacrosse and field hockey far outweighs the time commitments and physical effort demanded to play both sports, and I continued to feel that way when going through the recruiting process.”
Floyd started at Newton Country Day in ninth grade and has been rowing since sixth grade. She joined the NCDS crew team as a coxswain in tenth grade and continued through her twelfth grade year. In addition to crew, Floyd was a member of the NCDS dance team for four years. In the fall 2023 season, she won the Coaches Award for crew, and was named the dance team’s Most Valuable Athlete in both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. She was the NCDS dance team captain during her eleventh and twelfth grade years.
When asked why she chose Smith College, Floyd said, “I was already deeply interested in Smith before any recruiting process began, and thought it checked all of my boxes. However, what ultimately led me to commit was meeting the [Smith College crew] team. When I visited, I saw how each team member was there to build each other up; the team environment was very important to me. I found that it was the right mix of competitiveness and collaboration.”
At the event, dozens of NCDS students, family members, faculty members, and coaches gathered to watch McCann and Floyd make their college commitments and to wish them well on the next steps in their academic and athletic journeys.
