Marketplace for Second-Hand Soccer Gear Scores Big at Vassar’s Shark Tank-like Competition

More than 20 million Americans play soccer, but there’s no reliable, trustworthy way for them to buy or sell used equipment. Filling that need propelled the idea for FutMarket, a resale marketplace company conceived by two Vassar students and a third partner that would connect soccer-playing buyers and sellers across the country.

Judges at Vassar’s third annual Shark Tank-like New Ventures Pitch Competition awarded the top prize—a check for $4,500—to FutMarket founders Cailan Baker ’26, pictured above, Mauricio Mejia ’27, and Mejia’s brother Gianluca, following pitches by five contest finalists on April 30 in the Villard Room.

“FutMarket earned the grand prize on the strength of both their presentation and their execution plan,” said one of the five judges, Associate Professor and Chair of Computer Science Jason Waterman. “They spotted a genuine market opportunity in the World Cup coming to North America this summer, and they came in with a road map for getting from concept to launch.”

Baker and the Mejia brothers have played soccer for most of their lives—Mauricio Mejia is even a midfielder on the Vassar men’s soccer team—so they are familiar with the types of equipment their company would handle for buyers and sellers. Mauricio Mejia said the FutMarket team would use the $4,500 prize for AI model training “to take our platform and our base to the next level.”

FutMarket won the Most Invested Award for receiving the highest total of faux coins from attendees “investing” in the product they would like to back financially.

Other winners included Cher Mei ’26, who won the $2,000 second-place prize for Cherish, a business that would use recycled textiles to make clothing, handbags, and other products; Cooper Jaffe ’29, who was awarded the third-place prize of $1,000 for a project that would establish a network of mental-health support volunteers across dozens of countries to enable international, monocultural college students to achieve a cross-cultural perspective and eliminate barriers to managing their mental health; and Brandon Ogesi ’29, who won the Fan Favorite Award for Accorr, an app that would use AI to connect college students and recent graduates with job opportunities.

Ellen Rudnick ’72, Senior Advisor on Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has funded the prizes for the pitch competition since the first one in 2023. She also serves as a judge for the competition.—Larry Hertz

Jay Fu 28′

Turning Family History Into a Global Inquiry

As the recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Bekir Hodzic ’26, a history and political science double major, will investigate the long-term effects of genocide in several countries around the world over the next 12 months. Watson Fellows spend a full year outside of the U.S. pursuing independent projects with the support of a $40,000 stipend, international medical insurance, and other assistance.

Watson Fellowships support graduating seniors of unusual promise in pursuing a year of independent, purposeful exploration abroad through a self-designed project. Hodzic will visit Germany, Kosovo, Namibia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Armenia to study how those countries remember genocide on personal, communal, and national levels.

Hodzic, whose own family members survived genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, said, “My parents were very open about sharing what had happened to them when I was growing up, so I had a clear sense of that genocide’s memory. I know how it shaped us and forced us to rebuild our lives.” He says their experiences inspired his research.—Larry Hertz

Faculty Scholarship in Action

Karl Rabe

Rebecca Peretz-Lange Assistant Professor of Psychological Science, presented research at the Cognitive Development Society Biennial Meeting in Montréal, along with seven of her students. Aviva Barry ’27, Sadie Levy ’27, Carmen Haley ’27, Yasmine Alami ’26, Maddie Kirby ’27, Sam Vandyck ’27, and Sophia Varela ’28 discussed their posters on racial prejudice, fairness, gender disparities in domestic work, homophobia in childhood, and voting behavior. These research projects included data from over 700 children across the United States with whom the Vassar students engaged via Zoom. Kudos to Peretz-Lange, who received the 2024 Editor’s Choice Award from Cognition and Development, the flagship journal that hosts the conference. Her paper, titled “Children’s Essentialist Beliefs About Weight,” was chosen from more than 50 entries.

Lucas Pollet

Associate Professor of English Tracy O’Neill was awarded a 2025 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Writing. Civitella Ranieri is an international residency program that offers a “peaceful sojourn” in Umbria, Italy, for artists, writers, and composers to work uninterrupted on their craft. O’Neill spent six weeks at the summer residency, which is fully funded and includes travel, room and board, studio, and workspace. “At Civitella Ranieri, I was allowed the kind of freedom to be, create, and think that I haven’t experienced since being a student,” O’Neill said. “This capacious way of being was so needed and helped me to reconnect with a dreamier way of life more compatible with art-making and experimentation.”

Mike Okoniewski

Payton Small, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science, received grant funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for his research study “Investigating the Impact of the 2023 Supreme Court Decision on College Admissions Decisions and Student Identity Disclosure.” The Russell Sage Foundation encourages innovative social science research that uses cutting-edge methods to explore the social and living conditions of the U.S. Small will expand his study through experiments and interviews across the country to learn more about the consequences of recent Supreme Court decisions that eliminated race-conscious admissions policies. —Nandini Likki ‘25

Vassar-Dutchess Community College Team Earns Honors at Model UN Conference

For more than two decades, teams of students from Vassar and Dutchess Community College have represented dozens of countries at the annual National Model United Nations Conference in New York City. This year, four students from Vassar and seven from DCC earned an Honorable Mention Award—the third-highest award category—for representing the Tunisian delegation in advocating for several UN-sponsored programs and policies.
Approximately 2,000 students from the United States, Canada, and several other countries attended the conference, held in April. The bulk of the event took place at a hotel in New York City, but the students also spent time on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly. Vassar students Olivia Arenburg ’26, Matthew Leger ’29, and Michael Martinez ’28, as well as Language Fellow Antonella Iaffaldano, served on the Hudson Valley Model UN team.

A group of students posing in professional attire behind large "#UNGA" block letters outdoors.

Courtesy of the subjects.

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