In any given year, we have more than 600 varsity athletes at Johns Hopkins.  How well do I know each of the 600? Well, that covers a pretty wide range.  For the purposes of this piece, how well I know each of them is fairly irrelevant.

What is relevant is something the people in my office, specifically Jill Guise and Matt Lawrence, who have worked in our athletic communications office since 2006 and 2016, respectively, have heard me utter countless times through the years:  "Our student-athletes make me feel like I've done nothing with my life."

The most recent example actually involves two student-athletes on different ends of the "how well does Ernie know them" spectrum.

Elise Moore is a rising senior on Katherine Bixby's women's basketball team; I'd say I know her fairly well.  The nature of providing coverage to the women's basketball team lends itself to getting to know the players pretty easily.  It also helps that Bixby's office is all of 20 steps from mine and I can literally hear basketball practice going on from my desk.  It's not uncommon that I'll take a break and wander in to watch some practice.  I know, it's a rough job I have.

Anya Gunewardena is a rising junior on our highly-successful women's tennis team.  Truth be told, before about two weeks ago, I didn't know Anya beyond the fact that she was a member of said tennis team.  I certainly can't hear tennis practice from where I sit and I had never had a conversation with her before last week.
 
So, now that I've introduced the stars of this piece, are you familiar with Hopkins Bookletics?  If the answer is no, that's fine.  It was kind of a loaded question.
 
Hopkins Bookletics didn't exist at the start of the COVID pandemic (told 'ya it was a trick question), which emphasizes the point of me feeling like I've done nothing with my life.  Sure, I've been busy in the last three months and I'd like to think that everything I've done on the work-front will benefit our teams, athletes, and coaches.  But to be honest, I can't say I've gone above-and-beyond to do something extraordinary.
 
Enter Elise and Anya.  They weren't going to just coast through their online classes in the spring to finish out the school year.  Nope, they decided the pandemic presented the perfect opportunity to launch an initiative to support the continued education and well-being of elementary, middle and high school-aged students.
 
And with that, Hopkins Bookletics was born.
 
The initiative is a YouTube-based program that is emphasizing movement to start (while in some cases using books as "props") with storytelling, book access tutorials and other fun videos for kids.
 
Think about it.  What are some of the things we hear most about kids today?  First, they don't get outside and play enough – in short, kids today aren't active enough; second, they spend way too much time on their phone or in front of the TV … unless you count a tweet or an Instagram post as reading – they don't read enough either!
 
Elise and Anya saw a need and came up with a fun, interactive solution to both of those issues.
 
The Hopkins Bookletics YouTube page is now up and running.  There, you'll find, as of today, five Movement Breaks – three with Elise and one each with Anya, Brian Linton of the Blue Jay baseball team and Halie Egan from the women's basketball team.  You'll also find – as of today – more than a dozen books being read by several different student-athletes, tutorials on how to make a library account and four entries under something they've titled "Fun Shorts".
 
Who is this for?  Well, that's pretty obvious, kids.  Where are the kids from that it's for?  Anywhere, it's all online and free.  The students our Blue Jay athletes work with through our JHUMP program and other kids in the Baltimore area are sure to benefit.  But Elise is from Minnesota, Anya is from Florida, Brian hails from New York, and Arianna Konstantopoulos (women's soccer), another student-athlete you'll hear reading one of the books currently available, is from Colorado.  We need to get this to the youngsters in those areas as well.
 
If you are reading this and have kids, you need to check this out.  The page will continue to grow with content added frequently (more than two dozen different videos are currently loaded).

You'll see plenty of Elise and Anya in the videos and for sure they did the heavy lifting to get the initiative started.  But you'll see a number of different Johns Hopkins student-athletes leading exercises and reading books that can be shared with children.  In addition, Johns Hopkins coaches and athletics administrators and staff will also be leading movement breaks and reading – this is a department-wide initiative.
 
It's not surprising that other Hopkins student-athletes are jumping in and helping.  While this particular program was developed by Elise and Anya, we've got more 600 student-athletes doing so many things off the fields and courts that, despite my best effort, it's hard to keep track of everything they are doing.  It's not lost on me that they've all done more in their 18-22 years than I've done in my intentionally-not-mentioned number of years.
 
They sure are good at making me feel like I've done nothing with my life.
   
Ernie Larossa is in his 23rd year as the Director of Athletic Communications at Johns Hopkins.  In short, he has the greatest job in the world; he gets paid to watch Johns Hopkins athletes compete and chronicle their achievements.  In September, 2017, he decided it was time to periodically pen a column about something related to Blue Jay athletics.