The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1451622
MARCH 2022 THE WOLVERINE 13 INSIDE MICHIGAN ATHLETICS Field hockey senior goalie Anna Spieker made her way to Ann Arbor from Germany in 2018 and experienced the shock that many international stu- dents do in adjusting to new surround- ings. Spieker is bilingual, and her mother is from the Seattle area, so she did have some familiarity with the United States. Still, throwing herself fully into the Michigan culture was an adjustment. "It was pretty different," she said. "I had two suitcases with me. And that was it. I grew up going to Seattle in the sum- mer. I kind of knew what to expect. But coming to a whole new place is always hard. I grew up with German culture, so it was a little bit of an adjustment." Spieker, who was a team captain in 2021 and second-team All-American as a junior, adjusted accordingly and has experienced plenty of success during her four years in Ann Arbor. She just earned her third straight Academic All- Big Ten honor and made 21 starts in the Wolverine cage this fall. Spieker recorded a 1.19 goals-against average, which ranked 12th in the country and was sixth in win-loss per- centage at .762. Success on the field and in the class- room has defined Spieker's time at Michigan. Her workload is a bit tougher with studies in biology, but she has em- braced the grind and the lessons that come with it. "It is a lot of managing being outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself to places where you didn't think you could go," she said. "That'll set me up for life, learning how to handle adversity and all that. "When you have more to do, you stay on top of everything even better than if you had a lot of time on your hands." It helps to have leadership that sup- ports the academic endeavors of her students. Spieker and her peers feel empowered by head coach Marcia Pan- kratz and the foundation in place for success from the athletics department. "We have the academic center for student-athletes. You get tutoring and we get help on that," Spieker said. "And we have our separate advisors that help us through, make sure we're on track to graduate and doing well in our classes. "And then also the coaches are un- derstanding if you have an exam or anything big, you can miss practice. If you're struggling, they'll always under- stand and figure something out with you. There's that balance." Spieker's team captain role put her in a spot to be a beacon for the younger members of the team. It is something that she did not take lightly and made sure to set a tone. "Being a captain or a leader is just making sure your teammates are good and know what they're doing and on top of everything," she said. "And then being a good teammate and showing them what they can do." Spieker's major is ecology and evolu- tionary biology, a subject that she al- ways found interesting and was willing to embrace the challenges that came with it. "I just really enjoy it," she said. "I love animals and the way they interact with each other. And I just think our whole world is so interesting and has so much to offer. Topics like climate change in- terest me too. It is a broad subject that I just find so interesting. "It was hard picking my major be- cause I like a lot of different things and fields. I'm enjoying it, and then I can go into whatever I want later on in life and see what happens." Spieker's time at Michigan may be coming to a close, but her studies could be far from complete. She hopes to go back to Germany and continue her aca- demic career studying medicine. "That's my thought process at the mo- ment," she explained. "I'm going a little bit back and forth because I could still stay in America and do a master's de- gree and go into conservation biology or something like that. But right now I plan to go back to Germany and study medicine." Spieker's dream job involves caring for animals. "It's always been about being a doc- tor. That's really why I want to do it," she said. "When they asked me what I wanted to be when I was older, I used to write zoologist. Those are the two big ones that stand out. In the end, that's kind of what I'm doing now." — Anthony Broome Spieker, who was a team captain and started 21 games in the cage in 2021, is finishing up her studies in ecology and evolutionary biology. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY Student-Athlete Of The Month Field Hockey Senior Anna Spieker