​Amy Freeland had a plan. Growing up in Preston County in a large family with twelve siblings, she had watched education pass her family by. None of her older siblings had gone directly to college after high school. Her family doubted whether there was a way for her to go.

Amy’s answer was simple and resolute: “I’m going to get my whole college paid for.” She did.

Amy’s path to Fairmont State began in a high school health foundations class her sophomore year. She liked it. She stayed with it through senior year, completing a medical assistant program. She knew she wanted to go further and nursing felt right, but the route there was anything but certain.

Athletics had always been part of her life. She had run track since her freshman year of high school and dreamed of competing in college. A scholarship offer from Potomac State nearly pulled her in a different direction. Then she chose Fairmont State instead, thinking she might simply start a club track team.

Two weeks after move-in, Fairmont State announced the launch of a new indoor track program.

“I was so happy,” she says. “I knew I needed to join.” 

She did, and she earned an athletic scholarship that became one piece of a larger funding puzzle she had promised her family she would solve.

Amy had heard about the Datha & Gene Smith Fellows Program and the Bridge program – a summer
immersion for Fellows – through a high school friend. She was nervous about attending college, but the fellowship came with financial support that she needed, so she applied.

“It actually wasn’t that bad,” she says about the Bridge experience. “It made me feel more comfortable being in college. I didn’t know anything about attending college and the Bridge program gave me that.”

Among the week’s highlights: a whitewater rafting trip to the New River Gorge. Amy does not love water. She held on for dear life and came out of the experience with an understanding that she can do anything with commitment and perseverance. 

By the time the broader freshman class arrived, Amy already had a community. She had found her people.

In her first semester, Amy made the Dean’s List while running track, working for the athletic department, and keeping the kind of schedule that would exhaust most people. During the spring 2026 term, Mondays were her light day. Tuesdays and Thursdays she had three classes, a lift session in the strength and conditioning gym, and a shift at work. She is pursuing a pathway toward nursing, with her sights set on pediatrics.
 
The Datha & Gene Smith Fellows program coordinator, Lauren Pearson, does not hide her admiration. “She joined track, she works for the athletic department, her grades have been great – she has been a big success.”

Amy is the first person in her immediate family to attend college directly out of high school. That fact sits with her, not as a burden, but as a point of pride she holds on behalf of everyone who came before her.

When asked what she would say to the donors whose generosity helped make her first year possible – the scholarship dollars, the fellowship support, the funded resources she may never fully trace back to a specific name – Amy does not hesitate.

“I would thank them for giving me the opportunity to go to college. And for making my dream come true.”

She is a rising sophomore. She has years ahead of her. And she is, by every measure, exactly where she planned to be.

Off the mat, eight wrestlers earned Academic All- American recognition. This is a program record, and a number that speaks to the expectations Bonaventura has built into the fabric of the Wrestling team. 

“We always want to win at the highest level,” he says. “But working with this group has been a blessing. It helps when you work with good people.”

Stoneking has embodied the Bonaventura era completely, ending his career this season as a four year starter, three-year captain, four-time Academic All-American, four-time regional placer, two-time conference champion, and 4.0 student.

At this year’s annual athletic banquet honoring student-athletes who have demonstrated tremendous achievement and skill, Stoneking took home three honors: Male Falcon of the Year, the Feaster Award for the highest cumulative GPA among senior student athletes, and the Colebank Award, presented to the most outstanding senior student-athlete for combined on and off the mat success. He is only the second wrestler in program history to receive the Colebank Award, joining Addison Courtney, who won in 2024. “Pretty much you name it, he did it,” Bonaventura says.

Stoneking arrived when the program was still finding its footing. He graduated this year leaving it standing on solid ground, with a standard that future Falcons will measure themselves against, quite literally, once his name goes up on the wall.

That wall project is next on the list. Bonaventura wants names up: conference champions, All-Americans, regional placers, national qualifiers. Every athlete who walks into the room should know exactly what’s been achieved there and what’s possible. 

“Seeing is believing,” he says. “You see those names up there, and you work hard every day to achieve that.”

The room itself has already been transformed. Donor investment has turned it into a genuine wrestling facility, one that signals to recruits and returning athletes alike that this program is serious. It’s one of the most tangible returns on donor investment Bonaventura can point to, and he’s not finished yet. 

Walk around the Fairmont State campus and you’ll find wrestlers. They’re in the LEAD Center – a tutoring and testing program on campus – where Stoneking and others have tutored fellow students. They’re at Student-Athlete Advisory Committee meetings and Fellowship of Christian Athletes events. They’re helping run the cheerleading competition and supporting the Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament that happens each year.

This is deliberate. Bonaventura recruits athletes, many of them from right here in West Virginia, who want to be part of something bigger than the mat. Aviation majors. Engineering students. Future educators. Student-athletes navigating lab schedules and practice times who know their coach will work around a tutoring appointment when needed.

“At the end of the day, we want them to be as successful off the mat as they are on it,” Bonaventura says. “We have to figure it out together.” 

The Academic All-American record this year, eight honorees, is the proof.

Bonaventura doesn’t hesitate when asked about the impact of donor investment. It’s athletic scholarships that make competitive recruiting possible. It’s travel that turns a college wrestling season into something more.

​The program has taken trips to New York City, Indianapolis, and beyond – experiences that have stayed with athletes long after a tournament has ended. “We had a lot of student-athletes from West Virginia who were on cloud nine in New York,” Bonaventura recalls. “Some of them said it was the best week of their lives. And that’s all because of donor support.”

Day of Giving dollars this year will go directly toward scholarships and the wrestling room wall project. Every dollar, he’s quick to note, is targeted and part of a plan, not an afterthought.

“It’s money well spent every year,” he says. “Everything donors give benefits the guys directly.”

As Bonaventura steps into an expanded role as director of wrestling, the program is breaking new ground. Fairmont State is launching a women’s wrestling program, and the early response has been remarkable. Less than a month after going public, the program is already halfway to a target roster of 12 for the fall.

Bonaventura credits the men’s program’s reputation and social media presence for generating early momentum, and he’s energized by the challenge ahead. A women’s head coach has just been hired. Additional staff support is planned. And the same blueprint that grew a men’s roster from 15 to nearly 40 student-athletes, with records on the books, is ready to be applied again with the new women’s team.

“We just have to keep doing the right things and building the right way,” he says. “We’ll get more support as we go.”

The gaps are closing. The room looks the part. The roster is full and growing. And now, for the first time, there are two programs to build.

For Gennaro Bonaventura, that’s not a burden. It’s the next four years.

“I can always say it’s our win and loss record,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s the culture that this program has built.”

That culture grew out of relationships Cutri herself experienced as a student-athlete here. She came to Fairmont State unfamiliar with the emerging sport, was encouraged to try it by program founder Kristi Kiefer, and went on to become a four-time All-American. She moved into coaching after graduation, and when Kiefer retired, she passed the torch directly. “This program was made for you,” Kiefer told her. Cutri took the job as head coach in 2020 and hasn’t looked back.
 
For those new to the sport, acrobatics and tumbling draws from gymnastics and acrobatic gymnastics, combining them with elements of competitive cheer into a multi-event competition that unfolds over roughly two hours. It was created, in part, to give talented gymnasts somewhere to go after high school.

Before programs like Fairmont State’s existed, the path simply ended. The sport has grown from roughly six collegiate programs when Cutri first competed to approximately 55 today, and beginning in spring 2027, it will hold its first-ever NCAA Championship.

The path to this season’s conference title wasn’t always clean. Perfection, Cutri will tell you, isn’t the point until it counts. At the MEC Championship, her athletes hit a perfect meet when it mattered most.

A video from that moment circulated on the team’s social media after the event. In it, four athletes complete their routine, their faces locked in concentration – and then, in the span of a breath, everything shifted from intensity to joy as they realized they’d done it. The weight of the moment was visible and emotional.

“As soon as they hit that last skill, you see the smiles and the tears,” Cutri said. “Everything that they worked for all season, they did it. Two of the team members in the performing group were competing for the last time in the Feaster Center and it was a powerful moment for the entire team.”

Her athletes train five to six days a week, regularly reaching the NCAA’s 20-hour weekly athletic limit while carrying full academic loads. Cutri responds to this reality not with harder demands, but with the care and grace of a natural leader.

She holds what she calls “tea times” – one-on-one walks or conversations with student-athletes, about anything except athletics. She conducts random grade checks. She extends mental health days with no questions asked, save two: Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?

“I always tell them: you’re a human first, before you’re ever a student or an athlete,” she said. “If we’re not taking care of them, I’m not doing my job.”

None of the program’s national-level competition happens without donor support. Until the sport’s first NCAA Championship in 2026-27, programs like Fairmont State’s receive no financial incentives for postseason participation.

During this year’s Day of Giving, the Acrobatics and Tumbling team raised $25,000 driven, fittingly, by the team’s competitive instincts. Cutri offered a small incentive: whichever class sent the most donor outreach messages would earn a branded item of their choice. One class alone sent 748 messages. “This was eye-opening for me. We have so many people who show up for us,” Cutri said. “Their generosity supports our program in ways that immediately improve the student-athlete experience.”

​That giving made possible this year’s flights to the national championships, new equipment, and opportunities that rival what Division I programs offer.

Looking ahead, the program’s competition and training mats – now five years old – need replacing. New competition mats run between $10,000 and $13,000, with additional training mats adding several thousand more. “I would love for donors to know that you’re directly impacting the success of this program,” Cutri said. “It’s not just about paying for scholarships. It’s about keeping a good culture here and providing these student-athletes with life-changing experiences.”

That was on display at the 2026 NCATA National Championships in Azusa, California, where the Falcons competed on a national stage in late April. Seeded fourth in an eight-team field, Fairmont State defeated fifth-seeded Augustana in the quarterfinals to advance to the national semifinals – the first time the program had reached that stage in over a decade. The Falcons qualified for seven events and finished the season with a record-breaking 12-1.

Individual honors also reflected the depth of the program’s success. Cutri was named NCATA Division II Coach of the Year. The team claimed Division II Most Outstanding Player of the Year, Division II Specialist of the Year, two First Team All-Americans, one Second Team All-American, one All-Academic honoree, and the Colleen Kausrud Leadership Award.

With 11 newcomers joining the roster for the upcoming year, the team continues to grow. “The future is bright for Fairmont State Acrobatics and Tumbling,” Cutri said – and this season’s successes provide the proof.

The Fighting Falcons captured the 2025 Mountain East Conference Women’s Soccer Championship, defeating the University of Charleston 4-1 in the final. The program finished with a program-best 17 wins before falling to West Chester in the second round of the NCAA Division II Championship. Not a single player transferred out following the season – a fact Zaroyan calls extraordinary.

​“When nobody transfers out, that’s extremely rare,” he said. “Especially when you win. The fact that nobody left the roster this year says a lot about the university and the program.”

Zaroyan grew up in Monrovia, California, where his uncle coached professionally and planted an early seed. While studying at Cal State East Bay, he took a job with Match Analysis, a California-based soccer analytics firm. He tracked more than 750 hours of matches in Major League Soccer, Liga MX, and with the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, learning to translate on-field production into data. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in sports and recreational management from Temple University and a master’s
degree in strategic communication from the University of Tennessee at Martin.

His coaching path wound through Angelina College in Texas and the University of Tennessee-Martin, where he helped the Skyhawks to 17 wins and the 2021 Ohio Valley Conference championship. He also coached at George Washington University and then Syracuse, where he was named to the United Soccer Coaches 30-Under-30 program, selected from more than 270 applicants.

Zaroyan has been direct with his players about the challenge ahead. “You’ve been on a mountaintop,” he told them. “Everybody has their bullseye pointed at where you are. Our job is to get to the next highest mountaintop – and then the next one.” His philosophy is grounded in relationships and transparency. Rather than focusing players on trophies and tournament brackets, he challenges them to win every session and every drill, building habits so ingrained that when the stakes are highest, the team knows exactly what to do.

“I don’t want an environment with a perfection attitude,” he said. “Winning, to me, includes: I couldn’t do this yesterday, and I can do it today.”

Zaroyan describes his squad as a diverse group united by the game. What strikes him most is how naturally they connect across those differences.

He is recruiting selectively this cycle, prioritizing fit over volume, with commitments already in hand from a Southern California prospect and conversations underway with players from Spain and the Harrisburg area. The fall schedule will not allow for a slow start: the Falcons open against Slippery Rock before traveling to face Findlay, both nationally ranked opponents.

For donors who have invested in Fairmont State women’s soccer, and those considering it, Zaroyan wants you to know what that investment looks like from the inside. These are student-athletes who span majors from nursing to architecture to engineering, who stayed when they could have left, and who approach every day on this campus with genuine appreciation.

“When you’re a donor, you want to see your investment go deep,” he said. “At Fairmont State, you’re going to get four years of a student-athlete. Not just one season.”

That long view is exactly how Zaroyan thinks about the program he is building. The wins, the conference title, the NCAA tournament run – those are the foundation, not the ceiling. With a loyal roster, a demanding early schedule and a coach whose ambitions are as high as they are grounded, Fairmont State women’s soccer is pointed squarely at what comes next.

These contributions provide meaningful experiences that extend far beyond training and matches. “The funds are huge for our program because they help us plan impactful opportunities for our student-athletes,” Coach Travis Hinkle shared.
​
This year’s donations are being directed toward areas that elevate the team’s competitiveness and overall educational experience, including travel, equipment upgrades, and scholarship support. These investments not only enhance the day-to-day operations for the program but also ensure that each athlete has the resources they need to succeed.

One of the most exciting outcomes of this year’s Day of Giving is a team trip to San Antonio, Texas in September. Thanks to donor support, the team competed in a prestigious tournament hosted by St. Mary’s University, where they faced off against four of the top volleyball programs in the nation. “Donations were vital in helping cover the cost of flights and experiences during this trip. The student athletes created memories that will last a lifetime,”

Coach Hinkle emphasized. In addition to high-level competition, the team had the opportunity to explore the rich history and beauty of San Antonio, including a visit to the iconic Alamo. This kind of trip represents more than just another tournament – it’s a bonding experience, a learning opportunity, and a moment of pride for the athletes and the entire Fairmont State community.

Fairmont State Volleyball continues to raise the bar, athletically and academically. The team boasts a combined fall 2024 grade point average of 3.70, the highest in the athletic department, with athletes pursuing demanding majors like Nursing, Biology, Aviation, Business, Exercise Science, Education, Architecture, and Graphic Design.

Their work ethic and leadership extend into the community, too. The team has dedicated time to service initiatives both on campus and in the greater Fairmont area, including volunteer efforts at the Marion County Humane Society.

Competitive success is another point of pride:

• Five consecutive winning seasons
• On track to receive the American Volleyball Coaches Association Team Academic Award for the 10th year in a row
• Four All-Mountain East Conference Honorees
• Josie Skinn, Joey Borelle named First Team All-Atlantic Region, Honorable Mention All-Americans
• Baylie Ostvig named US Strength and Conditioning All-American

As Coach Hinkle and the team embark on the 2025/2026 season, they are determined to capture the Mountain East Conference North Division Title and return to the NCAA Tournament. With eight seniors preparing for their final season in Maroon and White, the team’s drive and unity have never been stronger.

To the donors who make these experiences possible, the message from Coach Hinkle and the team is simple and heartfelt: “We are so thankful for the love and support you provide in every way, from being in the stands at our matches to sending messages of luck or congratulations. We work so hard in everything we do, and we thank you for investing in us and giving opportunities for student-athletes to excel at their sport and their chosen fields of study. Thank you all for making us proud to be Fighting Falcons.”

To support the Fairmont State Volleyball Fall 2025 Fundraising Campaign, click the button below and make a gift by October 6, 2025.