Rashad Tate

I made Clemson's walk-on football team as a freshman but I wasn't awarded an official roster spot. With this in mind, I continued to pursue football at Clemson and discovered rugby after another tryout for the football team. Originally when I heard about rugby I thought that it was a weird sport and I wanted nothing to do with it; however, this was only because I knew nothing about it. I decided to attend one of the practices and I quickly realized how much I actually liked rugby. Though rugby is very tough and brutal, it is very strategic and requires immense amounts of teamwork and communication that I haven't experience in any other sport. I still have a lot to learn about rugby and I'm more than willing to stick around for it.

Connections is a program at Clemson University that focuses on guiding minority students through their college life. I applied to be a mentor for the Connections program during the second semester of my freshman year and was selected to begin serving as a mentor the next semester.

The FIRST program is a program that guides first-generation college students through their experiences in college. I moved on Clemson's campus the summer before my freshman year to attend the FIRST program. In this program, I met a number of people who I am still very close to today and I had a lot of fun experiences, but more importantly, I got a taste of what college life was going to be like and was able to get the insight that I couldn't receive from my parents or older siblings. I also took a class during the summer that I felt like helped me get acclimated to the speed of some of the classes in college. I am and will always be a member of the FIRST program and we have different activities and events that take place throughout the semester that I take part in.