Academic Standards

As finals week approaches the academic school year is drawing to a close and I am finding myself buried in papers and tests to write and study for. As a student athlete it gets difficult to balance the workloads of the school and the team, especially having taken an extra course to coincide with our Africa trip. But despite the difficulty balancing these things, Drake as a school and football team holds us to a higher academic standard, rather than the NCAA mandated 1.8 average g.p.a. We require a 2.2. We honor each semester’s academic top ten, the kids with the highest g.p.a.’s per their hours being taken. They each get a headshot framed and hung in the players’ lounge where our pioneer league championship trophies sit. I feel this represents the nature of our team, we are student first-athlete second. Even the most basic achievement of good grades is put on par (or above) the greatest achievement our football team can reach.

            I personally have only once had a chance to make the academic wall top ten. Not because I have had a bad college academic career, quite the contrary in fact, but the standards are so high for the players on the team that for a vast majority of the semesters the only way to break the top ten is to score a perfect 4.0 and even then you are not guaranteed to make it. Another aspect of the academic commitment of this team is the committed to excellence awards. Considered a high honor in our football program, it is a series of higher standards that, amongst other things monitors attendance in classes, grades, and progress in the academic realm of our student athlete responsibilities. It is an award I have made my personal goal to win all four years and have succeeded up to this point, although the standards are high and it is continuing to be very hard to accomplish.

            In total we spend approximately as many hours a day as we do participating in football related events each week. We are in essence playing two sports. We are playing football and we are playing our position in the classroom. The acuteness of the metaphor assimilating the nature of Saturday football games to a test is perfect. Each week we take steps to reaching that next higher standard, to learn something, to practice it, and to implement it.  Just as in football, the classroom requires us to build ourselves up so that eventually we can help our team whether that is through a play on the football field or leading a team of workers to get a big account, you set high goals and you achieve them. It is what Drake football does. 19,400 feet, that is our goal now.