Current Alumni Spotlight: Adrianne & Wendy
Former player, assistant coach now leads soccer team
Adrianne Almaraz, who had been serving as interim women’s soccer head coach, has been named the team’s permanent head coach.
Almaraz spent the last two years as assistant coach under the guidance of former Head Coach Danny Sanchez, who left Metro State in December. She was responsible for assisting with all aspects of the program and focused specifically on field coaching, recruiting and camps. The Roadrunners posted a 40-6-2 record in her two seasons as assistant coach, including claiming the 2006 NCAA Division II National Championship.
She also played her junior and senior years for Metro State and as team captain in 2004 helped lead the Roadrunners to a 25-1-0 overall record and 23 straight victories to end the season as national champs.
“Metro State is an exceptional academic and athletic institution. I look forward to continuing the success of the women’s soccer."
Hotel management turns out to be better than a ‘good fit’ for grad
By Pete Lewis (’93)
Wendy Petersen sounds like a real old timer when she reminisces about the Auraria Campus. “There used to be a major road running right through the middle of campus,” she said. “You took your life in your hands just crossing the street to get to class.”
Of course, in those days Petersen wasn’t worried about getting to class. Her father taught library science at the University of Colorado at Denver, so she spent a lot of her childhood on campus. She remembers Auraria as a giant playground.
“I literally grew up running around this campus,” she said. “I used to know all the lounges that had the best candy machines.”
After graduating from George Washington High School in 1982, Petersen enrolled at Metro State. She started off taking general studies classes until her father suggested that she look into the hospitality administration program that Metro State had just launched.
“I’ve always been very social and enjoy working with people,” she said. “Since tourism is a big industry in Colorado, I thought hotel management would be a good fit.”
Petersen said Metro State’s proximity to downtown Denver is ideal for combining classroom learning with real-world experience. While in school, she worked as a concierge at Marriott City Center Hotel, and had an internship with the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“I could walk from my classes to my job,” she said. “As a concierge, I got to know and networked with a lot of restaurant owners and people in the hotel business. During my internship, I worked an information table at the old Fairmont Hotel during the NCAA Final Four tournament.”
After graduating in 1989, Petersen took a job with Marriott International Hotels and Resorts, where she gained additional hands-on experience and training through its corporate development program. In 1996, she was promoted to regional sales manager for Sage Hospitality Resources, a hotel management and development firm that manages Marriotts and other hotels across the country. Fifteen of Sage’s hotels are in Colorado, including the Oxford Hotel, JW Marriott Denver at Cherry Creek, Courtyard by Marriott DTC, Lionshead Inn in Vail and The Curtis in Denver.
Petersen loves Colorado and Denver, and said her work has enabled her to participate in many of the city’s positive transformations.
“While at the Oxford, I witnessed the redevelopment and rebirth of LoDo,” she said. “And I’ve been fortunate to participate in the opening and conversion of several hotels. I was involved in converting the old Joslins department store at 16th and Curtis into a Courtyard by Marriott. That was really something because that’s where we used to shop when I was a kid.”
Petersen said the hotel industry is a great field for anyone who likes to work with people and who likes to travel.
“In this industry there is never a dull day,” she said. “Everyone seems to love their jobs. And I have friends, both co-workers and clients, literally all over the United States.”
Petersen said the hospitality business is undergoing some exciting changes. It has taken five years for the industry to bounce back after 9-11 and safety is now a much higher priority for hotels and their guests. The latest trend is for guests to mix business with pleasure, and business travelers are now more likely to bring spouses and children along, viewing a hotel stay as a minivacation.
Petersen spends about 50 percent of her time traveling for business, but she hasn’t severed her ties to Metro State. She’s a guest lecturer for the Hospitality, Tourism and Events Management (HTE) department, and she serves on the advisory committee for Metro State’s proposed 200-room hotel and HTE learning center at Speer Boulevard and Auraria Parkway. She also helped the Metro State Alumni Association with The Apprentice Challenge @ Metro State, a semester-long competition that paired teams of Metro State students with local nonprofits and corporations to address community needs and issues.
