It's no secret -- as athletes, we are competitive. Whether we are jumping or throwing, running or shooting, we are in a constant battle against our fiercest opponent: numbers. That's right, numbers. It's a score of 24 to 14 with 2:35 left in the second half; it's No. 23 with 13 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists and No. 14 with four personal fouls and two three-second violations; it's first and 10.

Even the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee gets caught up in numbers. From bylaws to legislative proposals, it's 12.8 and 13.4 or 03-139 and 02-83-A as amended by 02-83-A-1. For legislative purposes, numbers must be part of the equation, for how else could we find them in our Official Notice? But for student-athlete purposes, the SAAC must be on the other side of the equals sign, putting a face on the well-being issues those proposals attempt to maintain. It is on that side that we have battled past the numbers, represented our peers and played the sentient role well throughout this past year.

As a committee, we began the year with a number of priorities that looked something like this: lobby strongly for financial aid deregulation and push for better medical benefits; be a voice of reason for student-athlete well-being issues -- those that make headlines as well as those that fly under the radar; and more diligently communicate with our peers and represent them more effectively.

The year began with a California Senate bill that stirred debate. Ironically, some of the issues in the bill were similar to what SAAC had been advocating for some time. Although SAAC members did not agree with the bill's political approach, the gauntlet had been set and our embers were ignited. At the January Convention, we spoke strongly in support of greater medical benefits and increasing financial aid to the cost of attendance. In April, our efforts were rewarded when the Board of Directors adopted both measures.

When recruiting emerged with urgency in February, SAAC members contributed to a reform package that will go into effect this year and hopefully change the recruiting culture for the better. Similarly, with the ongoing efforts to implement academic reform, SAAC has been, and will continue to be, an important force. Other less-publicized issues this year included a proposal to eliminate foreign tours, and another that would have precluded an institution from considering a travel day to and from competition as a day off. We challenged the merits of the former at the Convention and again in April, and the proposal's defeat protected the educational opportunity of the foreign tour. And while the latter garnered differing views from individual SAAC members, the debate afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the inherent differences in travel issues within the Division I membership.

SAAC members also counted improved constituent communication among their number of successes this year. We reached out to a subgroup of football and men's and women's basketball players and published our first newsletter, called "In The SAAC, The Voice of The Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee." It provided a larger student-athlete audience with information about key NCAA issues and how we were responding to those issues as their representatives.

By the time we completed our July meeting we had compiled our box score, which showed much to celebrate, but still more challenges to anticipate. Over the course of the next year the SAAC will continue to be at the forefront of issues that affect all student-athletes. As a committee, we will maintain our two-way conversation with our peers, providing a lasting presence as a truly representative voice and communicating our actions and progress. We must speak to the issues, serving our peers in a manner that will make them proud.

In a numbers world, the coming year is the 16th since the SAAC was created, and it presents another great opportunity to continue our presence within the NCAA governance structure. Each success could tick across the screen, the years highlighted in box scores, and we could give ourselves a grade -- a score to compare this year with the last or the one before that. We might even take our successes, subtract our losses and carry the ties to the next year. However we do it, one thing remains: another year down, another number cleared.

And with the SAAC, everything always adds up to a win.

Ian Gray, vice-chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, is a former cross country student-athlete at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.