The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- September 27, 1999

Valedictorian Kipps validates the student in 'student-athlete'

BY KAY HAWES
STAFF WRITER

Alaina Kipps has spent the last four years dragging her battered 1964 Schwinn across campus: to class, to the gym, to the chemistry lab and to the concert hall. All the while, Kipps has worked to banish the notion of the "dumb jock." Certainly no one who knows her buys into that notion anymore.

Kipps, co-captain of the University of Southern California women's volleyball team last year, also was named the school's valedictorian in May.

Kipps graduated with a perfect grade-point average in psychobiology, the undergraduate curriculum of the university's neuroscience program, and she began medical school at Harvard University this fall. Kipps plans to become a pediatrician or a surgeon.

While at Southern California, Kipps made dispelling the "dumb jock" myth part of her job. "It's sort of been a mission," she said.

Kipps once wrote a note to Steven B. Sample, Southern California's president, after he delivered a stern lecture to student-athletes following an academic scandal at the school. Kipps wanted Sample to know that some student-athletes were students first.

"I wanted him to know that there were people in the athletics department who wanted to be in school and in honors classes," Kipps said. "People outside athletics have no idea how much time we spend on it."

Kipps takes her academics seriously. A state finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship last year and a member of four honor societies, she hasn't gotten a "B" since she was an eighth grader in Santa Cruz. She completed the rigorous requirements of two honors programs at Southern California, and she also played French horn in Southern California's concert band.

Kipps also won a fellowship to conduct original work at an HIV research center, where she explored ways to get HIV-positive children to take their medication.

The eldest of three daughters, Kipps said she inherited her work ethic from her family. Her father, David Kipps, is a pulmonologist, and her mother, Margo Kipps, is a high-school English teacher.

"In my family, the way you show your love is how hard you work," Kipps said.

It's clear that Kipps loves her academics.

"She really is an amazing student and a wonderful young woman as well," said William O. McClure, her academic advisor and a professor of biological sciences and neurology. "She has a wonderful mind and is extraordinarily well-organized, with an incredible ability with facts and concepts."

Kipps also loved her sport, taking it seriously as well.

The 6-3 middle blocker finished her junior season as Southern California's leading blocker, recording 151 block assists and 21 solos, the former a Southern California season record. Her blocking average of 1.61 was second all-time on the Southern California season chart -- and second in the Pacific-10 Conference that year -- and her 172 total blocks was fourth all-time.

Her coach, Lisa Love, now associate athletics director, said Kipps' intellect actually made her a better player because she always had relevant questions and didn't hesitate to ask them.

"It was delightful to coach with that kind of inquiry," Love said. "It's an exchange. She's contributing. She's not attacking."

Kipps also earned 1997 second-team GTE/CoSIDA Academic All-America honors, District VII All-Academic and first-team all-Pac-10 academic honors.

Last year she was poised to lead the team -- ranked fourth in the nation -- one more year. Then after just five matches, she tore her left anterior cruciate ligament. Love recalls the injury as being the only time she saw a player in pain correctly diagnose an injury while a trainer was still examining it.

"Practices (after Kipps' injury) were like a morgue," Love said. "My heart sank. It took the team at least a couple of weeks to recover. There was a hole in the team's heart."

Kipps' season was over, and so were the Women of Troy's hopes for a national championship.

Kipps could have redshirted, finished the year academically and returned to play at Southern California and attend graduate school, but Harvard medical school was calling her name. It was time to move on.

"I could try to get a Ph.D-M.D., but I wouldn't be done with school until I'm 29," Kipps said. "I'm feeling old as I speak. That's why I don't want to spend my life working with rats or on research that could help people in 20 or 50 years. It's just not me. I'd rather do surgery or medicine that could help a human being right now, not later."

Kipps may retire the Schwinn, but don't look for her to retire her ambitions any time soon.