The CMS-ence of Kira Favakeh
CLAREMONT, Calif. - Senior forward Kira Favakeh has been a team leader for the CMS women's soccer program, serving as a captain for the 9-3-3 Athenas as she prepares to celebrate Senior Day with her class tomorrow night at Pritzlaff Field (7 p.m. vs. Caltech).
The Athenas aren't the only team Favakeh is a major part of, as the senior engineering major has also led a Harvey Mudd College team designing medical technology at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California.
Favakeh had an immediate impact on the CMS women's soccer team as a first-year forward, scoring four goals off the bench to be the third-leading scorer on a SCIAC Championship team. The last two years have seen CMS miss out on the postseason, and Favakeh would like nothing more than to get back to the playoffs this year.
"Making the postseason would mean the world to me," Favakeh said. "It's something that every year for the last three years we've been working towards and to get there my senior year and be able to capitalize would just be an accumulation of all the hard work we've put in."
The accumulation of all the hard work that she has put in as an engineering major at Harvey Mudd has been Dean's List honors and an extensive resume before graduating college. She interned this summer as an engineering intern at Triple Ring Technologies, a biomedical research and development firm in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work locally at the City of Hope with her Harvey Mudd team has included developing Raman spectroscopy and laser ablation technology for cancer diagnostics and treatment, prototyping a bioimpedance spectroscopy device, and creating a device for remote lymphedema detection.
As a senior, Favakeh is also doing her part to leave a legacy behind after the graduates. She serves as a senior intern at the Harvey Mudd admissions office, interviewing prospective candidates to help bring in the next generation of Mudders. She also has helped mentor a talented group of first-year players on the Athenas this year, and she would love to lead them to the postseason to help create a foundation of success, ensuring the future of the program is in strong hands.
The Athenas stand at 5-3-2 in SCIAC play heading into their Senior Day game with Caltech, and three more points in that contest would keep CMS in control of its own postseason destiny as it closes out the regular season next week. "I'm really excited to use that night to show everything that we've got," she said.
As important as earning big wins are in the moment, though, they aren't as significant to Favakeh long-term as the experience of being a part of such a close-knit program.
"Being an Athena has meant that I always have a family of 30-something people there to support me," Favakeh said. "They've come to my presentations for my classes before. They've supported me through good times and bad, and just to know that I will always have all of these people that I've been with for the last four years by my side means the world to me."
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