{"id":62822,"date":"2020-01-20T15:21:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T20:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=62822"},"modified":"2025-08-19T10:03:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T14:03:17","slug":"tessa-virtue-inspiring-students","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/tessa-virtue-inspiring-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Tessa Virtue: Inspiring Students to Strive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Tessa Virtue: Inspiring Students to Strive\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

\u201cNo one person can possibly be all things to everyone. Being conscious of filling in the voids in the team around you is critical,\u201d says Tessa Virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tessa Virtue<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the 2020 edition of the SOAR Student Leadership Conference<\/a>, the five-time Olympic medallist shared her vision of leadership with Carleton students during a fireside chat in Southam Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd so is having a keen sense of purpose. It’s easy to get lost in the everyday details and the day-to-day pursuit of a goal, and overlook the long-term perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Tessa<\/figure>\n\n\n

Students Learn from Tessa Virtue’s Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Tessa Virtue knows a thing or two about long-term goals. For nearly 10 years she was at the pinnacle of her sport. With her ice dance partner Scott Moir, Virtue won three world championships and skated in three Olympic Games. Virtue and Moir bookended their Olympic career with ice dance gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympics<\/a> in 2010 and at the 2018 Winter Olympics<\/a> in Pyeongchang, South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their career was a run of sustained excellence, but it wasn\u2019t an unbroken string of successes. To get to the top \u2013 and stay there \u2013 Virtue and Moir had to adapt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe weren’t always number one. And that drove us in itself — that constant pursuit for greatness,\u201d says Virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach and every year, there was untapped potential.  It was always invigorating and refreshing at the onset of a season, when there was a carte blanche<\/em>, and we could figure out what kind of team we wanted to be.  We always tried to reinvent ourselves. There was always room for improvement, and — maybe most importantly — room for change in how we approach our sport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Tessa<\/figure>\n\n\n

Incorporating Data into an Artistic Sport<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Their artistic vision evolved throughout their career, and the tools they used did too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy the end, we were measuring our brainwaves every day and wearing shirts that monitored our energy output, breathing and sleep patterns,\u201d Tessa Virtue says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cData and sophisticated scientific research were being incorporated into this totally artistic and subjective sport. That became a new passion for us. We grappled with the idea of how we can continue to push the bar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live in a time of profound change, and it isn\u2019t only technological.  At this year\u2019s SOAR student leadership blitz, Jaime discussed social change \u2013 and how we can all help make space for each other\u2019s differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a leader, the most powerful thing you can do is share your story, in order to give others the space to share theirs,\u201d Jaime says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Leadership Means to Students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In December 2017, Jaime Sadgrove came out as non-binary, and during the leadership blitz, shared some aspects of the experience. Jaime was one of four students who gave a three-minute presentation about what leadership means to them, and after taking a tally from the audience, Jaime was selected as the audience favourite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn’t easy and sometimes it still isn’t,\u201d Sadgrove says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was the time my mom told me that if I got in trouble, she might have to still call me by my legal name. Or the time a student ripped down the poster about gender identity hanging across from my wall, and left all the others up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our winner of this years leadership blitz is…Jaime!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo one person can possibly be all things to everyone. Being conscious of filling in the voids in the team around you is critical,\u201d says Tessa Virtue. At the 2020 edition of the SOAR Student Leadership Conference, the five-time Olympic medallist shared her vision of leadership with Carleton students during a fireside chat in Southam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":62840,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[25],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-62822","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-student-experience"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/62822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/62822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63178,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/62822\/revisions\/63178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=62822"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=62822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}