This week, your campus celebrity is none other than Tricia Lipton ’12! Hailing from Kenilworth, IL, Tricia is a senior history major who just finished her thesis last week. (Congrats, Tricia!) I sat down with Tricia to talk about Ultimate Frisbee, home-school pride, and her last four years at Amherst College.
Ever since her first semester at Amherst, Tricia has been a dedicated member of Sparkle Motion, Amherst’s Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team. Before Amherst, Tricia “had only ever encountered Frisbee as a joke in my high school gym class.” But at Amherst, Ultimate was no laughing matter for Tricia – she served as team co-captain her sophomore and junior years, and she has gone to the team’s annual High Tide tournament in Georgia four years in a row. But beyond the hard work and dedicated game-play, the Ultimate field is a place where Tricia goes to spend time with some of her closest friends on campus. “I’ve loved every season with SpaMo,” she says. “I can’t imagine my time at Amherst without those crazy ladies.”
Tricia told me that her favorite non-disc-related hobby is practical joking. In keeping with the spirit of Easter season, her most recent attack involved pinning twenty marshmallow Peeps to a friends’ bulletin board, which sounds both hilarious and adorable. She says, “A more elaborate prank involved 5 plane tickets, 30 Darth Vader masks, 1 Darth Vader life-size cut out, and my Dad’s 60th birthday. Needless to say, he was surprised.”
Tricia also told me about a prank she played on a Williams tour group. “The ultimate team arrived at Williams early for a tournament, so we decided to wait in the warm student center. When we saw a tour enter the building, I put on as much Amherst paraphernalia as possible – hat, t-shirt, sweatshirt, shorts, even flip flops – and joined the tour.” Way to show your Amherst spirit on enemy turf!
Tricia has spent four lovely years at Amherst, but after this semester, it’ll be time for her to move on. Luckily, she’s already worked out her plan for next year – and it involves “haggis, bagpipes, and kilts, oh my!” This fall, Tricia will begin pursuing her masters in architectural conservation at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She will, of course, continue to play Ultimate overseas.
Finally, I asked Tricia for one silly quote to represent her. Her response: “It’s pop, not soda.” Wise words, Tricia.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Amherst chapter.