GGC scholar-athletes give back while excelling in academics

GGC SCHOLAR-ATHLETES

GIVE BACK WHILE EXCELLING IN ACADEMICS

While the GGC Grizzlies maintain an impressive, winning record, the Office of Athletics ensures that scholar- athletes excel in the classroom, in the community and in competition.

That is why men’s soccer team players and coaches spent this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day building an outdoor classroom at Roberts Elementary School (RES) in Suwanee. The facility will help teach students about elements of life science, sustainability and healthy eating.

Meanwhile, softball players joined with GGC Counseling and Psychological Services and the Student Military Society in a campus pushup challenge that helped raise public awareness for suicide prevention. In Duluth, women’s soccer team members assisted female sexual exploitation victims housed at Wellspring Living by cleaning apartments, moving and exchanging appliances, and sprucing up landscaping.

Dr. Darin S. Wilson, director of Athletics, established a culture for GGC teams and the office that is committed to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ (NAIA) Champions of Character principles, building positive personal growth as an important part of the college experience while fostering important relationships within the college and community. “While getting out in the community to do good work and help others is a win-win situation for Grizzly Athletics and GGC, it’s really beneficial for our student-athletes,” said Steve DeCou, head coach of the men’s soccer team.

DeCou’s team joined 30 other volunteers to build the RES outdoor classroom, which includes garden boxes in which students will grow vegetables, starting this spring. The school’s cafeteria personnel will be able to prepare meals with the vegetables grown on school grounds.

“It was a great project and a tremendous service experience for our players.” DeCou said. “The guys were fully engaged. They had a great attitude and it was awesome to see the finished product.”

The Grizzlies served a broad range of community needs this year. Baseball players provided valuable instruction for youths in the under-8 Gainesville Braves Baseball Club. They also played bingo and other games with children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Emory campus.

The softball team helped coordinate the Team Maggie 5-kilometer/10-kilometer running events in Roswell and the Georgia Race for Autism at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds, where players also served as cheerleaders for runners raising money and awareness for autism.

In addition, softball players partnered with the Chattahoochee Nature Center to assist with spring preparations by cleaning bird enclosures, clearing leaves and removing holiday decorations.

The men’s and women’s tennis players teamed with Omen Serve Tennis to provide a free instructional clinic for children from low income areas of the community. They also served at a free clinic at Ankle Biters Tennis, and encouraged children to donate gifts for the Toys for Tots organization to distribute to needy families during the holidays.

While maintaining their busy schedule of community service and athletic practice and competition, GGC’s student-athletes achieved a 3.03 cumulative GPA during the 2017 fall semester – the highest GPA for an academic semester since the Office of Athletics was founded in 2012.

Seventy-three of the college’s 131 scholar-athletes were named to the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll for achieving individual GPAs at 3.0 or higher. Four teams had cumulative GPAs of 3.0 or higher, led by softball with a 3.33 team GPA this past fall.

Left: Dr. Darin Wilson, director of Athletics, pauses for a photo with the women’s soccer team at the 2017 Athletic Banquet after celebrating the team’s cumulative GPA of 3.35. Several players received certificates honoring them for earning a place on the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll during previous semesters.

GIVE BACK WHILE EXCELLING IN ACADEMICS

Three soccer scholar-athletes earned Academic All-American honors, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Senior Samuel Sampaio Gomes’ work as a business major earned first-team honors, while Ellinor Bertilsson, ’19, business and Sophie Hoare, ’20, mathematics, were named to the second team. This is the second consecutive year that GGC scholar-athletes have been recognized as Academic All-Americans.

Gomes and Bertilsson joined nine other GGC soccer players named 2017 Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes. This includes seniors Aedan Radvanyi, business, and Bristol Countess, exercise science, as well as juniors Stina Andersson, psychology, Junior Ametepe, biology, Ana Gonzalez, psychology, Courtney McKenzie, pre-nursing, Lauren Moss, exercise science, Riley Wildeman, biology and Amanda Yarger, business.

Right: Members of the Georgia Gwinnett College men’s soccer team spent the 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday assisting in building an outdoor classroom containing multiple raised gardens boxes at Roberts Elementary School in Suwanee. Aedan Radvanyi, ’18, business, tamps down the soil in a raised garden box at Roberts Elementary School.

Success in the classroom carried over to the playing field as GGC’s men’s and women’s soccer teams qualified for the NAIA tournament, with the men’s squad advancing to the quarterfinal round. Both squads were nationally ranked for most of their seasons.

The baseball and softball teams are well-positioned for a successful spring season, and the men’s and women’s tennis teams are defending their 2017 national championships.