From University of Chicago Athletics
For University of Chicago senior Stacey Reimann, the next step after college needed to include new experiences.
Keeping soccer in his life was just an added bonus.
Reimann was one of 11 University of Chicago students named a Fulbright Scholar for the fellowship year 2018-19.
He completed a stellar four-year career with the Final Four Maroon men's soccer team last fall, and is set to graduate this quarter with a bachelor's degree in Law, Letters and Society. He was awarded a nine-month English teaching assistantship in Galicia, Spain, where he will teach the language in a high school and also share another subject he has much experience in: soccer.
"I will also be coaching soccer, which was part of the application process," Reimann said. "I had to create a proposal for an extracurricular activity and this was one way I could still keep soccer in my life after college."
The Fulbright Scholar program is funded through the United States Department of State Bureau and Educational and Cultural Affairs, and sponsors U.S. and foreign participants for exchanges in all areas of endeavor, including the sciences, businesses, academe, public service, government, and the arts. Its aim is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and the people of other countries.
Reimann found interest in the program after studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain, during the 2017 winter quarter, where he completed the civilizations core requirement, and also studied the Catalan dialect of Spanish.
"I started learning Spanish at a young age," Reimann said of his Spanish-speaking ability, which he describes as "near-fluent."
"My mom had me take classes as a kid, and I took it throughout high school, where I had an awesome Spanish teacher --- she inspired me to learn more of the language."
The Fulbright program will cover all housing and food costs as well as provide compensation for his fellowship, which will begin this September and last through the month of June.
It also gives Reimann – who attended high school in Birmingham, Ala., a chance to create more experiences in another place before he tackles his future goals: attending law school, where he hopes to study civil rights law.
"It's a good critical distance from the life I've created in college," he said. "Being able to teach after being taught for so long I think will be a gratifying experience, as well as being able to learn from my students.
"…The work I'm going into is going to be consuming, so it was important to me to have some time to live somewhere else and have other experiences after college."
Reimann earned United Soccer Coaches Second-Team All-Region honors as a senior, was a USC Second-Team Scholar All-American and First Team Scholar All-Region selection and led a Maroon defensive unit that collected 11 shutouts and a 0.64 goals against average in 2017.