For the Tree: Stanford athletes fight for sustainability in athletics

A group of athletes sit huddled in a small room on Stanford’s campus — strategizing. They’re not watching film from their last game or discussing their upcoming match. Instead, they’re tasked with facing their greatest opponent, one that follows them off the field — climate change.

This quarter, 22 students enrolled in “Earth Systems 26: Sustainability in Athletics,” a course that takes students through a speaker series of professionals who work in the intersection of athletics and sustainability. Although the name may suggest the class is solely composed of Stanford athletes, there are a wide range of students taking the course.

“It’s actually extremely diverse, which is really cool,” said Sophia Sanders, a TA for the class. Sanders is a senior studying Earth Systems and a driver on the women’s water polo team.

Nora Goodwillie, the other TA for the class, echoed the value in having athletes and non-athletes in the classroom.

“I think it’s also very powerful in the fact that we also have non athletes, master students, post-doc students, to be able to communicate what they learn to the rest of the world and hopefully create action,” said Goodwillie, a Stanford rower and junior studying Human Biology.

The class is taught once a school year and both Goodwillie and Sanders have been teaching assistants for the course since spring 2023. Both athletes were introduced to the course through Student Athletes for Sustainability (SAS), a club that works to encourage a partnership between Stanford athletics and sustainability initiatives. Earth systems lecturer Suki Hoagland has taught the course since its creation five years ago, when SAS members first approached her with the idea. Although she helps oversee the course, the teaching assistants take a leading role, running the day to day operations of the class. 

The spirit of student initiative that first created the class translates into some of the work within the class today. In addition to the speaker series, the class also has a project element. If taken as a two-unit course, students are tasked with creating a sustainability action project.

A few years ago, one of these class projects had a tangible impact on Stanford’s campus. The project changed the way fueling — a grab and go station for athletes to grab food between practice — worked by changing the plastic bags and cups at the station to compostable products. With the support of the fueling station nutritionist, they were able to get the fueling station green business certification.

“That was a cool one because the club pushed it forward,” Sanders said. “It ended up resulting in [the fueling station] being more green.”

Students who take the course for one unit are not required to do a project and solely attend the presentations of the speakers who are invited to the class.

The speakers have professional experience with sustainability in athletics. Sanders and Goodwillie met one of this quarter’s speakers, Alayna Burns — a forward on the Stanford field hockey team — at the sustainability-focused Green Sports Alliance Summit hosted this past summer. Sanders, Goodwilli and Burns were the only student-athletes at the conference. Burns, who spent her undergraduate career studying economics at Duke and playing field hockey, recently transferred to Stanford to play her fifth year and studies management science and engineering.

Burns is very familiar with conversations concerning athletics and sustainability. During her speaker event for the class this quarter, she spoke about her work with sustainability at Duke. 

As an undergraduate at Duke, Burns spearheaded multiple environmental advocacy initiatives on campus including a shoe drive in 2023 which collected almost 600 pairs of shoes from sports teams to be recycled and repurposed by various organizations. The shoe drive now happens each semester on Duke’s campus. 

Burns also worked to create a sorted waste system within the athlete dining hall at Duke. When she visited Stanford, Burns was excited to see they had a unique and sustainable waste system in place.

“[I] kind of was inspired when I came here on my visit for Stanford and saw their athlete dining,” Burns said. With the help of others, Burns was able to impact the way students threw away their waste after meals.

Much of the work Burns did at Duke was supported by a non-profit organization named Eco Athletes that connects a global network of athletes across professional and collegiate levels who have a passion for the environment. They encourage athletes to use their platform to make an impact while providing guidance for their sustainability initiatives.

The non-profit encourages collaboration and, as Burns found out, that support might just come from the opposite coast. In 2023, Duke and Stanford teamed up to compete in the EcoAthletes Collegiate Cup Competition. Within this competition, college athletes across the country receive credit for the exercises they complete. The logged exercises are converted into money which is given to projects that offset carbon emission. Athletes typically compete with a team comprised of athletes from their university, against other universities. However, that year Stanford and Duke competed together and placed 2nd in the competition.

“[The competition] started a Stanford and Duke bridge that I wasn’t even realizing I was forming, that would end up really meaning a lot in the future when I wanted to come here,” Burns said.

The organization is actively hosting events and supporting athletes across the world. Recently, EcoAthletes ran an initiative aimed at increasing the number of voters in the election, a sentiment illustrated by their catch phrase “vote like your climate depends on it.”

In total, Stanford has five Ecoathletes, including Sanders, Burns and Goodwillie. Although many people may not initially see the connection between sustainability and athletics, these athletes have worked to prove the two can go together.  

“It can be really, really powerful when you unite people within your sports for a certain cause, because you have more of an influence than you realize,” Burns said. “Other athletes across your community might be looking for that one other person who’s taking that courageous step to start a movement.”

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