Barry University soccer student-athlete Maya Ozery is featured on the inaugural issue of Champion magazine, which will be available at this week’s NCAA Convention and mailed to subscribers beginning Monday.

Champion magazine is the NCAA’s new printed communication piece – a quarterly magazine designed to showcase the good people who do great things to support intercollegiate athletics. Champion covers will feature student-athletes who not only represent the best of being a student and an athlete, but who also have accomplished extraordinary measures off the fields and courts.

Ozery is portrayed for her effort to alter the course of women’s sports in her native Israel after participating in a national league she felt was neglected. “I felt like there was no reason for the sport not to develop and be a part of the sports landscape in Israel,” she said.

Ozery rallied players to approach members of the Israeli parliament, lawyers and other organizations demanding equal opportunity for girls and women – not just in soccer, but in all sports. They also launched a media campaign, organized protests in front of parliament and distributed newsletters explaining their position. Those efforts led to the Israeli Supreme Court ruling that women’s sports in Israel should receive a percentage of any money awarded to sports programs in the country.

“This was not about us, but about girls who are going to start playing when they are 7 or 8,” she said. “My generation isn’t going to benefit from this fight, but it’s definitely for the future of women’s athletics.”

More information about Ozery, and about Champion magazine, will be available on the Champion Web site (www.NCAAChampionMagazine.org) beginning next week.