Student-athletes combine their passions for sports and design
Students help create a large-scale replica of an NCAA championship trophy
Provided
From left: Roberta Moger, Joe Allgeier, Joe Bonfiglio, and Zoe Heffernan pose alongside the completed NCAA trophy replica with RIT’s official mascot, RITchie the tiger.
Teamwork and camaraderie are ingrained in RIT’s student-athletes, and those traits extend beyond practice and game days. For three athletes majoring in industrial design, their collaborative mindsets helped bring the vision of an 8-foot-tall National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship trophy to life.
Over the course of the fall semester, fourth-year students Joe Bonfiglio, a former player for the RIT baseball team, Zoe Heffernan, who plays for the RIT women’s lacrosse team, and Roberta Moger, who plays for the RIT women’s soccer team, worked alongside Visiting Lecturer Joe Allgeier to build the massive trophy replica.
The sculpture will make its first game-day debut on Friday, Feb. 27, at the Women’s Swimming and Diving NCAA Division III Diving Regionals.
“I think it’s really cool that we’re giving back to athletics by leaving behind something that we built using the skills we learned at RIT. It was exciting to merge two of the things that we all love, athletics and industrial design,” said Heffernan, from Halladay, Utah. “Yes, it was a project we were hired for, but it didn’t feel like work because we were all excited and happy to be involved.”
After seeing a NCAA trophy replica at a previous championship game, Jacqueline Nicholson, executive director of intercollegiate athletics, was interested in crafting one for use at RIT. Displaying the trophy in the newly opened Judson Stadium, where RIT will host the 2026 NCAA Division II and III Women's Lacrosse Semifinals and National Championship, further drove the creation of this sculptural work.
Paul Besch-Turner
Heffernan, left, and Moger, right, said learning traditional woodworking skills was one of many benefits of working on this project.
“This was physically the largest and most complicated commission I’ve completed. I wouldn't have been able to do it in this timeframe without the students’ input and youthful excitement,” said Allgeier.
From the beginning, it was a priority that student-athletes were involved in the building process. Allgeier said he was pleasantly surprised when Nicholson and her team recommended Bonfiglio, Heffernan, and Moger for the opportunity.
When they were first-year students, all three athletes enrolled in the same class taught by Allgeier and he fondly remembered how, even then, the group worked well together. Reuniting with the trio after three years and seeing their growth, both as designers and individuals, was a special, reflective experience.
“This has been a great collaborative experience, even more so than I would have expected,” said Allgeier. “I think our success is a testament of their personalities and strengths, and it speaks to the quality of our student athletes who work at this high academic level. Balancing those responsibilities is extremely challenging and requires a certain level of focus and maturity.”
Creating the trophy replica required the use of both digital and analog processes. The group used Fusion 360 and a CNC router in the SHED’s Atrium Makerspace to create mock-ups and cut out larger pieces of materials. Then, they finished the sculpture using traditional woodworking techniques, such as milling lumber, lamination, and edge banding. The completed sculpture, made entirely from wood and acrylic, is estimated to be roughly 300 pounds.
Paul Besch-Turner
From left: Allgeier, Heffernan, and Moger hold up the front panel of the trophy replica to assess their progress.
Each student said they learned new skills and woodworking techniques as they made progress on the trophy replica, but Moger, from Bala Cynwyd, Pa., said her most valuable lesson focused on the mental process of making.
“I used to think everything had to be perfect when working on a project and I would get really stressed if things didn’t go as planned. Watching the way Joe went through the project little by little, staying calm and not getting caught in the nitty gritty things if we made a mistake, taught me a lot,” she said.
Bonfiglio, who is enrolled in RIT’s Combined Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree program for industrial design and architecture, believes that this project showcases the core of what RIT Athletics means to him.
“We don’t just play sports and go to classes; we also work together off the field and do cool things that support our community,” said Bonfiglio, from Dover, N.J. “The coaches, the teams, the teammates, the trainers; everyone in athletics has been really good to us. It’s nice to give back to an organization that has treated us so well.”
