National Student-Athlete Day celebrates academic success

The 16th annual celebration of National Student-Athlete Day, created by the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS) and Northeastern University's Sport in Society, was April 6.

The event, created to honor the outstanding achievements of student-athletes nationwide, was presented this year in collaboration with the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations.

National Student-Athlete Day was designed by the NCAS to honor academically achieving student-athletes who also have made significant contributions to their schools and communities.

Along with National Student-Athlete Day celebrations all across the country, NCAS also announced the winners of its annual Giant Steps Awards, which are given in several categories.

This year's only winner from the collegiate ranks was Stacy Sines, a swimmer at Washington College (Maryland), who was honored as a courageous student-athlete.

Sines won the 200-yard freestyle at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III swimming championships in December, only four months after she underwent open-heart surgery to fix an aneurysm.

Binghamton swims as one, wins as one

The men's and women's swim teams at State University of New York at Binghamton could conduct a United Nations meeting without leaving the pool.

Seven international student-athletes are on the men's team, representing five countries: Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Sweden and England.

On the women's team, there are four international student-athletes, all from either England or China.

When the two teams get together, seven different nations are represented, which could make for a great conversation or a great deal of discord, depending on the people.

At Binghamton, however, the teams have used their diversity as a strength. They designed T-shirts for themselves that say "Swim as one, win as one" and that feature the flags of all their different countries.

Men's and women's swim coach Benji DeMotte even has clocks
in his office that show the time in the swimmers' home cities, from New York to Stockholm, Warsaw, London, Bejing, Istanbul and Cairo.

Embracing their differences paid off for the Bearcats this season as the men won the America East Conference title, and the women took third in the conference. It was Binghamton's first conference title in any sport since the school joined Division I.

Life skills strategies for student-athletes

Becky Bell, former all-American at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the life skills program at the University of Arizona, has written a book designed to help student-athletes learn from their peers.

"If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Life Skills Strategies for Success from Today's Student-Athlete Leaders" offers advice from student-athlete leaders on topics from time management and study skills to money management, injuries and handing stress.

Student-athletes share their top pieces of advice in each area, including obstacles they've overcome and reasons for their success.

Though the book has just been released, more than 70 institutions have committed to using it -- in classes, with coaches and with student-athlete advisory committees.

Former NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey wrote the book's foreword, and several prominent figures in athletics have endorsed it, including Arizona men's basketball coach Lute Olson and Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

For more information, see www.
u.arizona.edu/~bell.

Number crunching

Looking back

Walton near perfect

One Men's Final Four record that has withstood the test of time is Bill Walton's championship-game scoring mark of 44 points in 1973. Walton, who helped the University of California, Los Angeles, win its last of seven straight championships that year, was dominant in the Bruins' 87-66 win over the University of Memphis.

Walton connected on 21 of 22 field-goal attempts (also a record that still stands) and pulled down 13 rebounds in a game that that was tied at the half. Walton hit all 10 of his second-half shots and got help from UCLA's Keith Wilkes, who scored 12 of his 16 points in the second half. Larry Finch led Memphis with 29 points and Larry Kenon added 20.

Walton's scoring record broke fellow UCLA star Gail Goodrich's 42 points in the 1965 championship, UCLA's first title in the seven-year skein.

UCLA, which beat Indiana University, Bloomington, 70-59, in the semifinals, finished the season 30-0. Walton was named the most outstanding player in the Final Four for the second consecutive year.

The win over Memphis was the Bruins' 75th straight victory.