“The opportunity to learn from fellow student-athletes and work with them while serving a community is priceless.”
Matthias Frick’s past experience with service includes working as a school representative for his high school as well as doing community service with his team here at Duke.
Matthias is a junior playing for the Men’s Soccer team at Duke. He is from Austria and thus had “a little” experience abroad before going to China. However, he has never been in China before and was very curious about the culture and people and thus decided to take on the challenge. In addition to that, he was really excited to work with local kids as engaging with kids is one of his passions. He believes that ACE provides the optimal opportunity to engage in community service, broaden the horizon and get to know other bright students from Stanford and Duke. He is looking forward to actively spreading the word and making sure that each and every student on campus knows about this opportunity.
Want to hear more about Matthias’s ACE experience? Contact Matthias.
Dear Future #ACEathletes,
- Best advice for learning about ACE: Make sure you talk to a former ACE participant about his experiences. This will on the one hand give you a good feel about what the program entails and on the other hand will get you super excited about the opportunity.
- Best advice for getting started at your program: I always love the first days of something new. Those are the days where literally everything is new and so much new information is learned. Thus I advice you to just embrace it AND take notes! No brain can manage to remember the amount of information you will get. But you will want to remember as much as only possible.
- Tips for getting to know your community: I created a pretty tight bond with our local translator Daniel by just being interested in his experiences and the language. Through those conversations you will start to create a bond and soon can start joking and built a lasting friendship.
- Tips for training: Don’t expect the facilities to be like at Duke. I sometimes had to run on a little strip of grass with yak dung all over it to prepare for our fitness test. Embrace what is there and stay in shape.
- Tips for bringing ACE back to your team: I had a lot of talks at team dinners at which I got to share my experience and get people excited about the opportunity.
- Reasons for staying involved in ACE: ACE was just an incredible time and I want to make sure that everyone know about the opportunity.