Rice University’s Erica Ogwumike has garnered an extensive list of awards throughout her basketball career. To
name a few, she’s been named
the 2018-19 C-USA Player of
the Year, the 2018-19 C-USA
Preseason Player of the Year
and the 2017-18 C-USA Newcomer of the Year. Notably, in
2018-19, she was Rice’s first
student-athlete to receive the
C-USA Female Athlete of the
Year award. On the court, she’s averaged 16.5 points, 10.5
rebounds and 1.7 steals per game. Her impressive stats
have led her to be ranked 29th in the NCAA for rebounds
per game, 12th in the NCAA for defensive rebounds per
game and 43rd in the NCAA for free throws made. All the
while, this kinesiology & policy studies graduate student
has maintained a cumulative GPA of 4.0 and has logged
more than 500 community service hours.
Golfer Aashaka Desai at the University of Delaware is a
senior double major in computer science and cognitive science. She is captain of the golf
team and she competed in three
tournaments, or nine rounds of
golf, this past fall, averaging an
83.11 with a par of +11. When
not golfing, Desai, who is deaf,
devotes her time to research
at the University of Delaware’s
Speech Language Acquisition
and Multilingualism (SLAM) lab
where she studies how artificial
intelligence technology can assist people with hearing
loss in daily life activities. Desai is also working on an app
to help with word recall using semantic networks, vectors
and clustering techniques. She’s a member of the Women
in Computer Chapter of the Association for Computing
Machinery and a member of the Chi Alpha Sigma National
College Athlete Honor Society
Soccer player Chanel Thomas is a senior managerial finance major at the University of Mississippi. At
the school, she serves as the Ole Miss Soccer Team Academic Captain and is on the Ole Miss Soccer Team Leadership Council.
Over the course of her freshman, sophomore and junior year, Thomas has played in a combined 60 matches for a total of 3,929 minutes.
She’s maintained a cumulative GPA of 4.0 throughout the years.
Senior soccer player Uriel Garcia at the University of
Houston-Victoria has played
43 games throughout his college career, helping his team
to two Red River Athletic
Conference championships
along the way. He’s a recipient of the 2019 Champions
of Character award, he was
named a 2018 DaktronicsNAIA Scholar Athlete and he was named a RRAC Scholar
Athlete for four years. On the dean’s list for six semesters,
he’s a major in kinesiology. When not on the field, Garcia’s
charitable spirit has led him to be an active volunteer in the
cleanup following Hurricane Harvey; a UHV soccer camp
volunteer; a 5-year participant in the Movember movement; a volunteer for the team’s annual blood drive; and a
volunteer at the local animal control center.
In the course of his swimming
career, senior Aaron Boyd, a
business information and technology major at Virginia Tech,
qualified in 2019 for the U.S.
Open and in 2018 qualified
for four events at the ACC
Championships in fly and free.
That year, he placed 10th in
the 400 free relay. Consistently on the dean’s list and
honor roll, Boyd also serves
as an Adopt-A-Family committee chair and a THRIVE
ambassador for Virginia Tech’s athletic mental health programming.
Basketball player and sports science major
Dontelius Ross at Jackson State University has
played in 19 games, including 17 as a starter,
earning his team an average of 2.3 points per
game. All the while, he has maintained a 4.0
GPA and has logged 94 community service
hours. In 2020, he earned the Breakfast of
Champions award.
Maya Banks is a senior accounting
major at Dominican University who
competes for the school’s women’s
tennis team while also giving back to
the community. Since 2016, she has
served on the Dominican University
NCAA Student-Athlete Advisory
Committee and, since 2017, she’s
served as a “Village Coach” for the
school, working with assigned mentees as well as other Black students. Additionally, she has
consistently volunteered with PricewaterhouseCoopers for
its Access Your Potential Service Days, teaching financial
literacy and gardening to underserved youth on the South
Side of Chicago.
University of Louisville’s Brenna Shanahan is obtaining
her master’s in sport administration while playing for the
school’s lacrosse team. Ranked fifth
in the Atlantic Coast Conference,
Shanahan appeared in 18 games
with 14 starts in the 2019 season and
led the team with 14 assists, while
adding five goals for 19 points for
that season. In 2019, she was named
to the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association’s honor
roll. Shanahan has volunteered with
the Louisville Urban League, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation,
the Cardinal Athletic Fund, Fellowship for Christian Athletes and the Dreams with Wings youth organization.
Junior Carlene Luna, a member
of California State University, San
Bernardino’s women’s soccer team,
played a total of 1,502 minutes in
2019 starting in 16 games. Within
those minutes, she faced 246 shots
but only allowed 28 goals. At the
end of the season, she finished
3-8-0 overall with 2 shutouts.
A communications major at the
school, Luna has in the past dedicated time to American
Red Cross Club blood drives, planning and executing the
tri-annual blood drive and orchestrating community outreach activities. In 2018, she visited children at the Loma
Linda Hospital on a bi-weekly basis to play and color with
them.
Runner Faramola Shonekan is a senior history major at the
University of Missouri making strides
in and out of the classroom. Voted
team captain for three consecutive
years, Shonekan was a recipient of
the University of Missouri Athletic
Program’s female “For the Love of
the Game” award and was a top
3 finisher in the 800m run at the
2019 Mizzou Open. In addition, her
academic achievements have made
her a 2019-20 Rhodes Scholarship Finalist and 2020-21
Fulbright Semi-Finalist.
Thi Nguyen, a senior at Saint Joseph’s University, has been a standout athlete on the track team. She
won the indoor 3000m at the
2019 Frank Colden Invitational;
she placed 12th at the 2019 Delaware Cross Country Invitational;
she placed seventh in the 3000m
and eighth in the 800m at the 2018
Fastrack Metro Season Opener;
and at the 2017 Jack Pyrah Invitational, she placed fifth in
the mile. A biology major with a cumulative GPA of 3.96,
Nguyen is a fellow at the Institute of Clinical Bioethics
where she is involved in researching and educating community members on public health issues. She is also a Big
Brothers Big Sisters Mentor as well as a Project Sunshine
Volunteer.
North Carolina State University’s Claire Zanti is a senior
biological science and animal science major who competes
as a shooter for the school’s rifle
team. In the 2019-20 season, Zanti
shot a career-high in small-bore with
a score of 579 as well as a seasonhigh of 586 in air rifle. Since 2015,
she has volunteered approximately
200 hours as a licensed wildlife
rehabilitator for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries
and in the summer of 2018, she
volunteered 96 hours in Chernobyl,
Ukraine where she helped sterilize and vaccinate hundreds
of stray dogs and cats within the exclusion zone. She’s made
the dean’s list for seven semesters and has been named a
Collegiate Rifle Coaches Association Scholastic All-American since 2016.
A wrestler at George Mason
University, senior Talha Farooq
is a three-year starter and an
Eastern Wrestling League Conference place winner. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree and
master’s degree in criminology, law and society, Farooq is classified as a Provost Scholar Athlete. Outside school, he serves
as a mentor with the NOVA Wrestling Club where he helps young men and women with both their homework and wrestling skills.
Tennis player Rayden Murata is
a senior film and video production major at Pacific University.
A three-time Northwest Conference Scholar Athlete and a
three-year member of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s
All-Academic Team, Murata
has served as president of the
Student-Athlete Advisory Committee since 2019. Additionally,
in 2019, he represented Pacific
University at the 2019 CoSIDA Convention in Orlando,
Florida.
Jordan Holly, a senior baseball player at Murray State
University, played all 54
games in the 2019 season
finishing the year with a .254
average, 7 doubles, 1 triple and
1 home run. A finance major
at Murray, Holly has made the
dean’s list multiple times, was
on the Ohio Valley Conference honor roll in 2018-2019
and holds a cumulative GPA
of 3.97.
Golfer Matthias Schmid at
the University of Louisville
made a mark on his campus
by setting a record stroke
average of 70.55 for one season. Additionally, the junior finance major was named to the
Atlantic Coast Conference
team and earned second team
All-American honors — the
highest golfing honor in the
school’s history. He has also
been named to the PING AllRegion squad where he was selected as a PING all-region
honoree and has played on the International Palmer Cup
team.
Joseph Medina, a volleyball
player for the University of California, Merced, was recently
named UC Merced’s Male Intercollegiate Scholar Athlete
of the Year and a Golden State
Athletic Conference ScholarAthlete. A senior psychology
major, Medina dedicates time
to serving at St. Vincent de Paul,
a charitable organization in his
hometown, where he helps provide food and clothing to the homeless.
Runner Givon Washington, a senior business administration and economics major at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
has a stellar record on the track
and in the classroom. He finished
in 5th place at 3:09.12 for the
4x400m relay at the 2019 Big
Ten Championships. Washington’s 2019 personal bests for
outdoor track are 21.81 seconds for the 200m and 47.50
seconds for the 400m. In the
classroom, he’s maintained a cumulative GPA of 4.0 and has
been awarded Nebraska’s Highest Honors Academic Medallion in 2018 and 2019.