Night of the Owl showcases student athletes

By Savannah Ezelle 4/22/15 10:56am

Student athletes gathered in Tudor Fieldhouse for Night of the Owl, an annual event celebrating their athletic and academic achievements. As part of Rice Rally Club, I got the opportunity to support my peer students in a rare, off-the-field context I don’t normally see them in.

Not really though, because I see athletes in an off-the-field context all the time. I sit next to them, I talk to them and I’m often stuck with them in Fondren frantically trying to complete a lab due the next day. The people I exchange looks with when a professor goes overtime are the same people I supported last year as a cheerleader, and the same people I continue to support today on Rice Rally Club.

You see, this is a problem I think many Rice students have. We see either the student or the athlete depending on the situation; we need to start recognizing both. Let’s be honest, Rice, we need to start recognizing athletics period.

We have great teams and we have great athletes, something that this year’s Night of the Owl has further proven to me. In addition to an exhaustive list of athletic victories, the Owls boast immense academic achievement. The women’s cross country team was recognized for its average cumulative GPA of 3.748, the highest of any team in Rice’s history. Additionally, over 40 student athletes won the 2014-15 Conference USA Commissioner’s Academic Medal, awarded to those with a 3.75 cumulative GPA or better.

Also, each player on the volleyball team has completed an average of 21.2 hours of community service. Let me put that in perspective — that’s more hours of community service on top of practices, games, classes, homework, research, labs and workouts than hours of sleep I get during finals. These 21.2 hours don’t factor in how the volleyball team serves as role models to countless girls around Houston; if you want to see the smallest Owl fans, come to a weekend volleyball game. Those are some happy and invested children.

Additionally, Night of the Owl lauded individuals. Gabe Baker, a redshirt senior safety on the football team, won the prestigious O.J. Brigance Courage Award for the second time. Baker can also add the Bob Quin Award to his already impressive list of successes, including serenading a Hawaiian airport with his cello after the Hawai’i Bowl. Natalie Beazant of the women’s tennis team won the Joyce Pounds-Hardy Award for her “efforts in sports, in the classroom and in the community.”

The main question, then, is why Rice students often don’t recognize the achievements of student athletes. Why does the Rice community often belittle athletics and why do some Rice students actually take pride in their apathy concerning athletics that aren’t intramurals?

We need to support each other in our endeavors, whether athletic or academic. We must realize that others might walk different paths, and that there’s more depth to those around us than we often assume if we go by superficial clues, such as a jacket or Gatorade bottle. As members of the Rice community, we play different positions with different degrees of visibility, but we are a single team. We huddle, we break and, on or off the field, we play together.