Brittany Ronan
For Brittany Ronan ’12, CIA cross country is much more than just a championship team, and her fellow student-athletes more than just teammates who helped win conference titles.
“We’ve become like a family now, with all the inside jokes and fun that we have,” Brittany says. “Going into last season, everyone looked at us as a culinary school and thought ‘they’re not going to do too good,’ so winning the championship has been extremely rewarding.”
That “championship” is the Hudson Valley Women’s Athletic Conference (HVWAC) Cross Country Championship, the five-kilometer race that the CIA has won in back-to-back years now. Brittany twice finished in second place behind fellow CIA runner Jackie DeGrandpre, but for her, it all comes down to teamwork.
“We’re very good at ‘packing,’ which is running together to motivate each other before breaking from the pack at the right moment,” Brittany explains. “We go over the course ahead of time and plan it out together. During the race, when I saw Jackie ahead of me and some of the other girls behind me, I thought ‘We got this.’ It was very exciting.”
The strong sense of team extends away from the course as well. “We have this little ‘Game of Life’ that we play,” she says. “If you say the word ‘mine’ and someone catches you, you have to do 10 pushups. And that’s not just for this season or while we’re at the CIA—it’s for life.”
As for Brittany’s own life, she’s on track for the career she’s wanted since she was baking at home for her family while growing up in Bridgewater, CT. “No one in my family likes to cook,” she recalls. “It became a hobby of mine, and it was mostly on the baking side. My family kept telling me I was good at it, so after my sophomore year in high school, I transferred to a technical high school to pursue it further. That’s when I heard about the CIA.”
Brittany was impressed with how each class in the college’s baking program was very specific and intensive, so she enrolled. When she arrived on campus, she immediately felt at home. “It was cool to be able to be with a group of people who all cared about food,” she says. “Anyone else says ‘It’s food, just eat it,’ but here we all had this common interest.”
And her classes are every bit as valuable as she thought they’d be. “I’ve learned a lot, and the courses let you hone in on each individual skill,” she shares. “Getting to know the different chefs really helps too. You can go back to them for advice or to ask questions.” She must be asking the right questions—Brittany was one of three CIA student-athletes to be named to the HVWAC All-Academic Team last fall.
Her goal is to open a bakery café someday, and Brittany sees her bachelor’s degree classes as great preparation for that. “Courses like Business Planning and Restaurant Law will be good ones for when I want to have my own place,” she says. “I’m writing a 50-page plan for one class that will likely be the basis for my bakey café.”
With both her athletic and academic accomplishments, the writing is certainly on the wall for Brittany to have a long and successful baking career. Wherever she goes, one thing is certain—she’ll always have her CIA cross country “family” close at heart.
