It’s not just titles and crystal.
Student-athletes bring home national championships and National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics cups—13 in a row—season after season, to cheering crowds. What happens more quietly, off the field and out of the spotlight, are the hours these players put into honors papers and community service, in addition to daily practices.
At the close of each varsity season, the NCAA awards up to 174 postgraduate scholarships—87 for women, and 87 for men. Seniors qualify for the awards with a 3.2 GPA and put the one-time grants of $7,500 toward graduate school. Or recipients can defer if they’re en route to the Olympics or considering playing professionally for a while. Some 100 Cardinal athletes have received the NCAA recognition. “We lead the nation in postgraduate scholarship awards,” says Jenny Claypool, director of championships. “We’re proactive in nominating athletes.”
This year, Stanford has nominated seven student-athletes from fall-season sports. The recommendations, along with faculty endorsements, will be reviewed by an NCAA regional committee, and then by a national review board. Winners will be notified in mid- to late March.
Jessica Zutz: FIELD HOCKEY
The first time Jessica Zutz “messed around” with field hockey in junior high, she hated it. “All I really wanted to do was run around, and I was goalkeeper.” So she quit and joined a boys soccer team. Then in high school, her mother made her go out for field hockey again, “so I would make friends.” Zutz did, and says “the rest is history. I played on the forward line and got to run a lot.”
A star forward for the Cardinal, Zutz led her team in goals (13) this season. Beating Cal 3-1 in the NorPac Championship in November was “absolutely unreal.” The communications major is thinking about business school, with an eye on a career in hospitality services, and also hopes to do some volunteer coaching next fall. “I would love to keep hockey in my life. Somehow.”
Scott Bolkan: SOCCER
Like the protagonist in John Grisham’s novel Playing for Pizza, who leaves the NFL to play pro football in Italy, Scott Bolkan is exploring soccer leagues in Germany, Scandinavia and Greece. Or he might go out for trials with teams in Portland and Seattle. The midfield defender has played soccer “forever—since first grade,” and would welcome an opportunity to stay in the game. Anywhere.
Bolkan is a human biology major who counts biological sciences professor Robert Sapolsky’s Human Behavioral Biology as “a great class.” He also has medical school on his academic horizon: “My concentration is neuroscience, and I may do psychiatry.”
Bolkan’s service to the community includes visits every couple of weeks to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and tutoring English to University custodial workers during their late-night break. “It’s not formal teaching, just talking together,” he says. “I’ve met this neat guy, and learned about his family.”
Neftalem Araia: CROSS COUNTRY AND TRACK AND FIELD
As he pounds out hour after hour, the five-time All-American is revving up for the next big 10,000-meter race, at the Stanford Invitational in April. Then come the Olympic trials in late June. “That’s definitely a childhood dream,” Neftalem Araia says. “It may be presumptuous to think I’ll make the team now, but if I don’t, I’ll try again in 2012.”
Araia will pick up a master’s degree in sociology in June and start running professionally, he hopes with sponsorship from an athletic-shoe company.
He also is looking for an MBA program and ultimately wants to build bridges between nonprofit NGOs and international aid organizations working in Eritrea, where his extended family lives.
Arianna Lambie: CROSS COUNTRY
She was Pac-10 Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year for the third consecutive year. Nabbed her 12th All-America honors. Took home her fourth NCAA team title. And her grades are tops. Why? “It’s really important that I’m not just a runner. I enjoy the challenge of excelling in both academics and athletics,” the long-distance runner says.
Arianna Lambie listened to her track teammates in high school who told her “cross country was more fun, that it was fun to go out running on the golf course and in the woods.” Today, her campus runs take her up Alpine Road and around Gunn High School, where “it’s the excitement of improving” that keeps her going.
Lambie is an earth systems major who’s earning a co-terminal master’s degree. “I’d like to try to find a job in the energy field, either with government or with an organization that’s trying to establish standards to help consumers figure out how to better manage their energy consumption.”
Peter Finlayson: WATER POLO
The two-meter defender has a thankless job—trying to keep the biggest, strongest players on opposing teams from scoring goals. At 6-feet-2 and 197 pounds, Peter Finlayson is often outgunned. “But I try to make up for it with heart.”
Finlayson spent two seasons on a Mormon mission in southwest Japan, helping with rice harvests in the fall and shoveling snow from thatched roofs in winter. “My job was to help people, so I did a lot of stuff.” He’ll receive a master’s degree in sociology in June, then work for a management consulting firm in the Bay Area before going on to business school. He’ll continue to play in Masters leagues and perhaps help out with the Cardinal team, where his younger brother, Sam, competes. “We old-timers can still hop in and help out,” Finlayson says. “We love to scrimmage with the team and show the young whippersnappers the ropes.”
Sandy Hohener: WATER POLO
With 217 saves this season, goalie Sandy Hohener is sticking with his game plan. “There’s only so much you can control, and you can’t get flustered if [opponents] score. You can’t let that take you out of your game.”
Hohener has always loved the fast pace of water polo, which he calls a “thinking person’s game.” That and the fact that his teammates have been committed to playing hard. So working with a design team on plans for a new Center for Jewish Life in Palo Alto was a natural fit. The building project was assigned in a course the civil engineering major took in fall quarter.
Hohener hopes to go on to graduate school in engineering next year, where he’ll continue to hone the skills he displayed in front of the goal. “There’s a huge mental aspect to it. Although you’re not involved in the offense, you have to concentrate and be able to respond to what’s happening.”
Rachel Buehler: SOCCER
As one of 40 “pool” players for the 20-member U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, Rachel Buehler has been invited to training camps to play with the Olympics-bound team and their new Swedish coach, Pia Sundhage. “She’s getting to know the pool of players.”
Buehler graduated in December, and since then has been practicing with the under-23 women’s team while she takes some required courses for medical school. At press time, she was headed for a tournament in Spain—and hoping that reports of a resurgent women’s professional league are true. “Every year you hear the league is coming back, but it actually might happen this year.”
In January, the hum bio major was named one of eight recipients of the NCAA Top VIII Award, in recognition of her athletic success, academic achievement and community service. “I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, but maybe in the ER, because I like the excitement.”
