Throughout the previous two years, USI’s athletic program has accomplished much following its move to Division I collegiate sports in 2022. Last year, the women’s basketball team completed “The Double” (In European football, “The Double” refers to when a club wins both the regular-season league title and the primary domestic tournament), which saw them capture the Women’s Basketball Ohio Valley Conference Regular Season and Postseason Tournament titles, respectively.
In addition, the swim and dive teams saw an impressive amount of success, considering that most of the men’s and women’s teams were composed primarily of freshman and sophomore athletes.
However, USI’s success wasn’t exclusively on the field, as the Screaming Eagles achieved great success in the classrooms as well. In fact, they were awarded the Ohio Valley Conference’s Institutional Achievement Award for the second year in a row. This title is awarded to the university in the OVC with the highest percentage of student-athletes who achieved a grade point average of 3.25 or higher throughout the school year.
USI’s men’s basketball team and the women’s softball team were individually recognized for their academic success in the 2024 school year. These teams are an exemplary testament to the hard work and drive that student-athletes at USI have and the high standards Stan Gouard, men’s basketball head coach, and Sue Kunkle, softball head coach, hold their teams to.
This standard is something Athletics Director John Mark Hall takes pride in as well. He has set this standard as the primary goal of the athletics program: “to make young men and women better than they were when they got here.”
“We feel like we can succeed in the classroom and on the field,” Hall said. He said he wants not only to keep them on track academically but to succeed academically.
Hall specifically used that order to emphasize the “student” half of “student-athletes,” because an athlete’s academic record must be acceptable before a ball is dribbled or pitched. USI student-athletes must be winners in the classroom before they win games.
Being a winner isn’t just about the skills or attributes an individual has, although those traits certainly help. It’s also about the mentality a winner has, which starts in academics. When a student-athlete, or even a student in general, excels in their academic world, they have more freedom to work toward their craft and improve their self-esteem and self-discipline. The latter two are major keys to winning.
If athletes don’t have good self-esteem in class, they certainly won’t have it when the lights are brightest. The same can be said for discipline, as finishing assignments late has a likely correlation with performing poorly on the field.
In Chapter 28 of “Turning Back,” ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said it best: “The greatest carver does the least cutting.” This statement promotes the concept of thinking more, as opposed to completing physical actions, as a way to limit mistakes.
Simply put, more thinking can be done when the brain is naturally trained to think clearly and with compassion — a trait developed through long days, weeks and months of studying topics that fascinate and excite the human mind. Once the mind has accomplished this task, the possibilities for achievement are endless.
