Making Waves
Leah Bolitho ‘25 supports student staff through Aquatics graduate assistantship
When Leah Bolitho first considered her grad school options, trading in her garnet and gold for maroon and white seemed daunting. When packing away her whole life and moving almost 800 miles away from Florida—the place she grew up, went to school, and where her family still resides—she never thought that Texas would be the home it is. But after a year as a graduate assistant with Aquatics, everything is going swimmingly.
“I found such a community in the people at Rec Sports,” she said. “Looking back, I really wouldn’t have it any other way. I was meant to end up here.”
As a GA, Bolitho is responsible for managing Aquatics staff, facilities, and events. Her schedule varies from day to day, but she mainly works with full-time staff to support student employees. Sometimes, that means sitting and talking with a lifeguard after challenging training exercises.
“Knowing that I was able to coach someone through something that they were having a tough time in gives me a lot of confidence,” Bolitho said. “I think our staff doesn’t realize enough how much we truly care about all of them as individuals and how much we care about their development.
Working in Aquatics often means high stakes, but Bolitho finds a unique reward in risk management; she is credited with completely changing the culture around audits and training.
“At the end of the day, this is a really important job, and you can save someone’s life,” she said. “Knowing that our lifeguards and our staff are trained, capable, and confident in doing so gives me a lot more peace, not only as a patron but as someone who’s trained them and now has my name behind their training.”
Her time with Rec Sports is not quite over yet, though. As she prepares for her second year as GA, Bolitho knows exactly what she wants to add to her repertoire.
“Something that I’m looking to work towards moving into my second year is making this place feel even more like home for our staff and lifeguards,” she said. “Making them feel like they’re a valuable and important part of this team is something I want to learn how to be good at.”
After a year of advocating for student staff, revamping the audit system, training lifeguards, and managing events, Bolitho personifies much more than a model Rec Sports graduate assistant.
“The Rec has defined, for me, what it means to be an Aggie,” Bolitho said. “Working here, I embody a lot of the values of Texas A&M, and I’m able to work with a lot of different user groups within A&M. I think that Rec Sports has a great way of bringing people together.”
