Three Rivers College’s athletic teams had a lot of success on the court and on the field last season — including a fourth consecutive trip to nationals for the women’s basketball team and the baseball team finishing with its best record in more than two decades.
The Raiders and Lady Raiders also had a successful season in the classroom, as 39 TRC athletes earned NJCAA All-Academic honors — the junior college equivalent of Academic All-American honors — and the college also won the Midwest Community College Athletic Conference’s Harold Oetting Academic Award for the top grade-point average (3.42) in the conference. Additionally, the baseball, softball and women’s basketball teams had the top GPA in the MCCAC.
“It makes it nice where you don’t have to worry about kids off the court — whether or not they’re going to class and whether or not they’re getting their academics done,” TRC women’s basketball coach Alex Wiggs said. “We can guarantee kids that whenever they come here, they’re going to leave here with an education. And that’s the most important thing — the ball will stop bouncing one day, the bat will stop swinging and all that stuff one day. And they’ve got to have that education and be set up for life to have a career.”
First-team All-Academic honorees include four baseball players (Haden Cuthbertson, Aaron Fitch, Grant Fitch and Josh McDonald), four softball players (Tori Stinnett, Lexus Hagood, Camryn Casey and Madelyn Hefner), Alexia Weaver from women’s basketball and D.J. Prater from men’s basketball.
Earning second-team All-Academic honors are six baseball players (Jaden Anderson, Mart Blijleven, Trey Fikes, Dorian Lippens, Cooper McClure and Tyler Vincent), three softball players (Kodie VanEycke, Alyssa Bastien and Olivia Crabb) and two women’s basketball players (Kaleigh Thompson and Ilayda Durka).
Meanwhile, eight baseball players (Grant Dotson, Steven Henley, Peyton Nelson, Brian Payne, Noah Pruitt, Brady Robertson, Stuart Tharle and Ty Thatcher), five softball players (Josie Bezzole, Jordan Moore, Wriley Taylor, Natalie Wilks and Abi Jorgensen), four women’s basketball players (Brooke Klepzig, Kiara Neal, Samari Taylor and Brittani Wells) and Cole Nichols from basketball earned third-team All-Academic honors.
“We generally try to recruit guys that have academics in mind,” TRC baseball coach Tyler Smith said. “It makes it a lot easier to transfer them onto the four-year level, which is the whole goal. The grades are usually the holdup (to) going Division I, Division II or whatever for our guys, so the better grades they make, the easier it is to transfer, especially with the way scholarships are designed for baseball at the four-year level.”
And knowing players are making their grades in the classroom allows Smith to focus more on coaching.
“I’ve always said that when your kids are doing what they’re supposed to in the classroom, when they’re doing what they’re supposed to in the community, when they’re doing what they’re supposed to do off the field and all we have to worry about is baseball, it makes our jobs really easy,” Smith said. “If we’re not having headaches off the field, we can focus on baseball and be more successful on the baseball field.”
TRC softball coach Jeff Null echoes Smith’s sentiments.
“We want to focus on coaching softball, not coaching grades, coaching effort and those kinds of things,” Null said. “I think we put importance on that when we’re recruiting and looking at kids, making sure that they show that they have that work ethic, their grades have been good and all that and it just translates over to (the college) level.”
Wiggs said the performance in the classroom reflects good on the college overall.
“If you can’t handle business off the court, then how are you going to handle business on the court?” Wiggs said. “I think it just shows the type of kids that we have, that they’re good humans, and they want to not only represent themselves but represent Three Rivers in a positive way.”
Mike Buhler - Daily American Republic