MORGANTOWN — Maybe colleges have gone about this scholar-athlete thing all wrong.
Maybe they’ve put too much emphasis on the athlete, too little on the scholar.
Score 20 points in a basketball game and you get headlines across America. Get an A in physiology and no one knows it outside your immediate family, if you bother to tell them.
Then along comes someone like Liz Repella, a West Virginia University women’s basketball player on the Mountaineers’ nationally ranked team, a salmon who spends much of her time swimming up that academic stream but who would be doing so in total seclusion were it not for her high profile in athletics.
Her major is exercise physiology, which probably 60 percent of the college students couldn’t spell, let alone pass, and even though she is the top scorer on the WVU basketball team her grade point average is even higher.
For that effort, the Steubenville, Ohio, native was named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Women’s University Division first team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America.
Only five women’s basketball players across America are named to the team, which honors players who manage to combine basketball skill with academic excellence, the kind of excellence that has brought Repella a 3.95 GPA to go with the 14.4 points a game she averages.
As important as it is that Repella has accomplished this is the thought that she has been proactive in promoting the concept of student athlete, dedicating herself to spreading the gospel.
Earlier this year she filmed a commercial for WVU that shows her working hard alone in the Coliseum and doing likewise with her books.
“If I know I can get an A in a class I will get an A in that class,”she says. “To be able to do academics and sports is a great role model for little kids to look up. They all can’t play Division I sports, but they all can go to college and get an education.”
Repella is driven in both areas — athletics and academics.
This becomes evident in a page that has appeared on the WVU Web site under a section called “Student Athletes Speak Out.” In this section they give you “50 Things You Should Know About Liz Repella.”
How dedicated is she to sports and academics?
Here are two questions and answers:
Favorite book:
“I don’t read much except for my chemistry and biology books.”
Favorite TV show:
“I don’t watch TV.”
Do not get the impression that this is a boring young lady, for that would be wrong. She is intelligent and entertaining, but she is also goal oriented, as are so many athletes, and driven.
The time she puts in on basketball and academics leaves her no time for casual reading. And she’s too busy trying to become an American idol to watch “American Idol.”
She’s just different.
Favorite class (from what grade, school?)
Physics, from the 12th grade (Steubenville High School).
You will not get that answer from very many students, not even physics majors.
“Liz is truly a student-athlete and this is something that West Virginia University should be very proud of for her efforts in the classroom,” her coach, Mike Carey, is quoted as saying in the release about her Academic All-American honor. “She is a tremendous role model both on and off the court for WVU. We are very proud of her.”
“I’m very honored by this award,” Repella said in the release. “It is a true reflection on the amount of work I put into my studies as well as my efforts on the court. This is an award I’m tremendously proud of.”
She’s in some pretty good company on the Academic All-America team, joining Erin Anthony, who has a 3.78 GPA in civil engineering at the U.S. Military Academy; Angie Bjorklund, a 3.80 psychology major at Tennessee; Kelsey Luna, a 4.00 psychology major at Indiana State; and Maya Moore, a 3.70 individualize major at Connecticut.
Repella is WVU’s second CoSIDA Academic All-American in women’s basketball, joining former All-American Rosemary Kosiorek, who was named to the team in 1991 and 1992.
