After spending her spring semester in Egypt, Trinity College senior Kat Conlon returned home and said her moment of readjustment came in a sporting goods store.
“I’ve never been more excited to be a female athlete in America,” Conlon said. “Even the women who are athletes in Egypt are struggling to find a place with their religion in sports because, for instance, if you’re a runner, you need to keep everything covered. To come back here and walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods and see a whole section of women’s athletic gear, it’s mind-blowing to me.”
Conlon, from Bourne, Mass., is the captain and only senior for the Trinity women’s basketball team, which is coached by former UConn standout Wendy Davis. Conlon, 5 feet 10, averaged 3.1 points and 2.9 rebounds in eight games last season before leaving for Egypt. The Bantams, who went 12-12, open next Friday at NYU, a Division III Final Four team last season.
Conlon, 22, recently finished her final season as the starting right wing for the Trinity field hockey team.
While studying at American University in Cairo, Conlon said the abundance of heavily armed police in the impoverished Muslim city helped her feel safe. But for religious and health reasons, Conlon was unable to consistently exercise.
“Training was so hard, it seemed nearly impossible in the beginning,” she said. “First of all, you never see girls out running, ever. But even the male athletes would get up at 4 in the morning just to try and beat the pollution, and even then it’s impossible.”
A city of more than 16 million, Cairo’s fumes put an end to her running after her initial attempt.
“I’ll never forget my first run,” she said. Wearing sweats in 107-degree weather, she approached the downtown area near the university and felt a sharp pain in her throat.
“I started to see my breath. It was just a brown smoke,” Conlon said. “I realized it was all the pollution.”
An international studies major with a focus on the Middle East, Conlon spent time aiding the Bussy Project, a primarily Egyptian group organized to defend women’s rights.
“If I wasn’t playing in sports, I wanted to be helping the women’s cause while I was there,” she said.
After watching the maid in her apartment receive poor wages each week, Conlon spoke up to the group about fighting for more and better jobs.
“I was laughed at,” she said. “They were like, that’s not what we’re working for. They were working more toward the women who are in [prominent positions] and getting their faces out there because they think people focus too much on the negatives of women in the Middle East.”
Conlon renewed her attempts to train, joining a small gym near the school, but shoulder problems exposed her to the gender barrier even more.
“I went up to the male trainer there and he said, ‘You’re going to have to come back when the female trainer is on duty,”‘ Conlon said. “They wouldn’t even look at it. There were times I got so frustrated because I felt like I was prepared to go abroad, but I couldn’t prepare myself for that.”
Conlon, who also spent time teaching English to Sudanese refugees, said the experience gave her a new perspective.
“I would weigh [the women’s struggles] over the fact that they aren’t letting me play basketball,” Conlon said, laughing at herself. “The Egyptians have so much more on their minds that I felt bad complaining about basketball. The more I got involved in these women’s rights groups, I saw there are so many things that need to be changed.”
Trinity field hockey coach Anne Parmenter said despite Conlon’s difficulties training abroad, the fourth-year starter remained an important contributor for the Bantams (8-7), who lost in the first round of the NESCAC tournament to Middlebury, 4-2, on Oct. 29. Conlon scored the team’s final goal — the second of her season and seventh of her career.
“She’s one of the more mature Trinity students that I’ve coached,” Parmenter said. “I think she and I get frustrated with players on the team that little Trinity issue dramas get so overplayed here. You want to just go, ‘Hey, let’s just look at the real world or let’s get out of this square mile of Trinity.’ Kat is somebody who’s had her head on her shoulders a lot squarer than a lot of players I’ve coached.”
Conlon said she wants to return to Egypt and continue helping. Before she does so, she plans to combine her academic and athletic experiences in Cairo to raise awareness at home through her senior project at Trinity.
“I roomed with an Egyptian track runner in Egypt,” Conlon said. “She wrote to Nike, which sent her a hijab [a women’s veil] with the swoosh on it. She’s so excited — she’s never had anything for women.”
Conlon’s senior thesis, she said, will discuss how companies such as Nike are jumping onboard with Middle Eastern women’s sports by creating equipment that fits with their religion.
“I couldn’t be happier to have gone through that experience before my senior year because every day I go out to practice, I never take it for granted,” Conlon said.
Contact Jay Acunzo at
jacunzo@courant.com.
