INDIANAPOLIS---Six former NCAA student-athletes have been named recipients of the 2007 Silver Anniversary Award.
The
award recognizes former student-athletes who completed successful
collegiate careers in various sports 25 years ago and went on to excel
in their chosen professions.
The awards will be
presented at the NCAA Honors Celebration on Sunday, January 7, during
the annual NCAA Convention in Orlando, Florida.
This
year’s Silver Anniversary Award honorees are Gail Koziara Boudreaux
(Dartmouth College, basketball and track and field); Ambrose “Rowdy”
Gaines (Auburn University, swimming); Steve Jordan (Brown University,
football); Patricia Melton (Yale University, indoor and outdoor track
and field); Ann Woods Smith (University of Florida, gymnastics); and
William Stetson, M.D. (University of Southern California, volleyball).
Following are biographical sketches of the 2007 award winners:
Gail Koziara Boudreaux
Dartmouth College
Women’s Basketball and Track and Field
Executive Vice President for External Operations for Health Care Service Corporation
A
four-time first team all-Ivy League selection and three-time Ivy League
Player of the Year, Boudreaux’s success on the basketball court led to
her being named an Ivy League Silver Anniversary women’s basketball
team member. Boudreaux still holds 23 school records at Dartmouth
including career scoring (1,933 points) and career rebounds (1,635). In
addition to being a standout on the basketball court, she was also an
all-American shot putter.
While
on campus, Boudreaux was one of four student members of the Dartmouth
College Athletic Council and an English tutor for the intensive
Academic Support Program. A member of the Green Key Society service
organization, she held leadership positions in the Aquinas House
Catholic Student Center and was a volunteer at Shriner’s Hospital for
Crippled Children.
After
graduating from Dartmouth, she earned an MBA in finance and health care
administration from Columbia Business School. Boudreaux joined Aetna in
1982, holding several managerial positions, eventually becoming senior
vice president responsible for Aetna, Incorporated’s Group Insurance
Business.
In
2002, Boudreaux joined Health Care Service Corporation as president of
the Illinois Division. Today, she is the executive vice president for
external operations for Health Care Services Corporation, overseeing
the corporation’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans in Illinois, New
Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas as well as the corporation’s subsidiaries,
including Fort Dearborn Life, Colorado Bankers Life and Dental Network
of America.
Boudreaux
remains an active Dartmouth alumna and coaches basketball in her
community. Currently, she serves on the board of directors for several
boards including the Dental Network of America, Fort Dearborn Life
Insurance Company, the Genzyme Corporation, the Metropolitan Planning
Commission and the Board of Trustees of the Chicago Field Museum. She
is also a member of the YWCA’s President’s Advisory Council and the
Chicago Network, an organization for Chicago’s most influential women.
Ambrose “Rowdy” Gaines
Auburn University
Swimming
Chief Fundraising and Alumni Officer, USA Swimming
An
eight-time NCAA champion and a six-time Southeastern Conference (SEC)
winner at Auburn, Gaines claimed 1981 SEC Athlete of the Year honors.
In 1982, Gaines, a 22-time all-American, was named the first recipient
of the Conoco Phillips Performance Award winner presented by USA
Swimming to the top performer in a specific event. The 17-time U.S.
national champion also captured the Robert J.H. Kiphuth Award four
times as the top scorer at the championships in 1981 and 1982.
A
two-time Olympian, Gaines earned three gold medals in the 1984 Games.
He set world records in the 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle events.
Two years after being named Swimming World Magazine’s World Swimmer of
the Year in 1980, Gaines was chosen for one of swimming’s highest
honors, the McDonald’s Spirit Award. He was the World Masters champion
in the 50-meter and 100-freestyle in 1992.
Gaines
has served as a commentator for swimming events on CBS, TNT and ESPN.
He has called four Olympics, including the 2004 Games in Athens for
NBC, and also will have the call for the network during the 2008
Olympics in Beijing. After stints as educational outreach director for
the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and as vice president and general
manager of Mainichi Sports USA, Gaines currently is the chief
fund-raising and alumni officer for USA Swimming. He has been inducted
into the Alabama and Florida Sports Halls of Fame and the International
Hall of Fame. In addition, he is one of just 14 swimmers to earn entry
into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.
An
active spokesperson for the Children’s Miracle Network and Swim Across
America, an organization dedicated to raising money for and awareness
of cancer, Gaines also conducts youth clinics around the country.
Steve Jordan
Brown University
Football
Director of Construction Services, Ryan Southwest/Ryan Companies U.S. Inc.
A
two-time First Team all-Ivy selection in 1980 and 1981, Jordan was a
three-year starter and was named Associated Press honorable mention
all-American in 1980. He set the single-season Brown record for
receiving yards in one game (188 verses Penn in 1981); set the
receiving record for yards in a season (693 in 1981); and finished his
career as Brown’s third all-time career receiver with 1,330 yards.
Jordan
graduated from Brown in 1982 with a degree in engineering. He was also
a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the National Society of
Black Engineers.
A
member of the Minnesota Vikings from 1982 to 1994, Jordan was six-time
all-Pro selection at tight-end (1987-92) and was recognized as a member
of the Vikings 40th Anniversary Team. He served as representative of
the Vikings players’ union in salary and contract negotiations. Jordan
currently serves as senior project manager for Ryan Companies Inc.,
where he coordinates client construction activities among architects,
engineers, subcontractors and superintendents on Ryan Companies
projects.
Jordan
established the Steve R. Jordan Endowed Scholarship for Minority
Athletes at Brown in 2000. Also at Brown, he has served on the Brown
Sports Foundation Board of Directors since 1996 and member of the
engineering department’s 150th anniversary campaign committee. He
served as Term Trustee Emeritus of the Corporation from 1993 to 1997
and a Corporation Fellow from 1998 to present. Other professional and
civic contributions include member of the College Football Hall of Fame
Advisory Board, Leukemia Golf Classic former honorary chairman, Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation honorary board member, Special Olympics volunteer,
National Missing Children’s Foundation, Multiple Sclerosis Society,
Boys and Girls Clubs, Camp Confidence and Minnesota Attorney General’s
Office Alliance for a Drug-Free Minnesota.
Patricia Melton
Yale University
Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field
Educational Entrepreneur
The 1982 Ivy
Player of the Year, Melton received Yale’s Outstanding Senior Athlete
honor, The Nellie Elliot Award. She was captain of the indoor and
outdoor track teams in 1982. She was a three-time recipient of the
Treasurer’s Track Award as the Outstanding Performer in the
Harvard/Yale Dual Meet and recipient of the Outstanding Performer Award
at the both the 1982 indoor and outdoor Heptagonal Championships. She
was a seven-time Heptagonal champion throughout her undergraduate
career, Eastern Champion in the 400-meter hurdles in 1982 and the
silver medalist at the outdoor 1982 National Collegiate Track &
Field Championships. She was named all-American in 1982 in outdoor
Track & Field and was ranked ninth in the 400-meter hurdles by U.S.
Track & Field News that same year. Melton still holds the Yale
indoor track school record in the 400-meter dash and the outdoor track
record in the 400-meter hurdles.
As a student-athlete
at Yale with a major in Afro-American studies, Melton volunteered for
the Special Olympics. She also served in the United States Marine Corps
as a reservist where she was named the top Honor Graduate in her
Women’s Recruit Training Command.
Melton is a national
education leader, school developer and start-up expert who assists
state and community stakeholders, school districts, colleges and
youth-serving not-for-profit organizations in designing and developing
new small high schools for under-served urban, first-generation and
low-income students. She has been instrumental in the creation of nine
new K-12 schools in three states (Washington, Ohio and Indiana). She
has spent 20 years working to expand educational equity for all
students, with a particular focus on high school completion and college
access and success.
Melton is currently the lead
school design consultant and early college high school expert for the
University of Indianapolis’ Center of Excellence in Leadership of
Learning (CELL). She also consults with YouthBuild USA, a national
nonprofit organization serving out-of-school and dropout youth based in
Somerville, Massachusetts. Melton has served in a number of senior
management positions working on projects to increase educational access
for all students for organizations such as A Better Chance, Inc., the
Seattle Urban League, College Planning Network, Massachusetts General
Hospital, City on a Hill Charter School and Teacher Institute and
KnowledgeWorks Foundation. She was also an assistant track coach at
Yale from 1986-88 and served with the Seattle Goodwill Games Organizing
Committee as an assistant vice president for sports from 1988-90.
Athletic
achievements since graduating from Yale include 1988 U.S. Olympic
Trials finalist in the 800-meter run; 1988, Souders Award, New England
Prep School Award for distinguished sports and career achievement;
1994, Ivy League Silver Anniversary Team, 25 years of Ivy League
Women’s Athletics, 1999; Middlesex Athletic Hall of Fame, 2003.
Professional achievements include a fellowship award by the Leadership
for Educational Entrepreneurs (LEE) program for emerging national
school leaders sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education charter
school division and Arizona State University.
Professional
and civic contributions include at-large delegate to Yale University
Alumni Association, INSPIRE board member, Bain & Monitor Consulting
Pro-Bono Group, Middlesex School Board of Trustees, officer/secretary,
MESA board member – Math, Engineering and Science Achievement program,
and the African-American Academy Planning Committee, Seattle Public
Schools.
Ann Woods Smith
University of Florida
Gymnastics
Senior director of public affairs, Medco Health Solutions, Inc.
A
seven-time all-American at Florida, Smith was the Honda Broderick Award
winner as the top collegiate female athlete in gymnastics in 1982. That
same year, she claimed a third-place finish in the vault in the NCAA
championships event final and captured the Association for
Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) all-around, uneven bars and
floor exercise titles. An all-Southeastern Conference selection in 1981
and 1982, the first two years of league-sponsored gymnastics
competition, she is third in school history with 20 all-around
victories.
As
a student at Florida, Smith developed and implemented a comprehensive
public relations campaign for a municipal childcare center that
resulted in a 35 percent boost in attendance and earned the National
Community Service Project Award. She was a 1982 NCAA Postgraduate
Scholarship recipient.
Since
2000, Smith has been senior director of public affairs at Medco Health
Solutions, Inc., where she is charged with creating proactive publicity
campaigns that general local, regional and national media attention.
Under Smith’s leadership, the group has earned nine communication
awards for campaigns over the past four years. Before moving to Medco,
she rose to the level of senior director for marketing communications
at Nabsico, Inc. during a 10-year span with the organization. She also
formerly served as women’s sports information director at Florida and
worked as a sports researcher and gymnastics terminologist for ABC
during the 1984 Summer Olympics.
The
publicity and media coordinator for St. Elizabeth Interparochial
School, Smith also assists in a variety of the school’s fund-raising
activities. In addition to serving as an annual judge for the Boys and
Girls Clubs of America’s national marketing campaigns, she is an
assistant soccer and softball coach with the Wyckoff Recreation Program.
William Stetson, M.D.
University of Southern California
Men’s Volleyball
Orthopedic Surgeon
Associate Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine
A
member of the Southern California men’s volleyball championship team
(1980), Stetson was a four-year letter winner and later, a USA Men’s
Junior National Volleyball Program Team Member. Named Southern
California’s Most Outstanding Senior Student-Athlete and the Pacific 10
Conference Most Outstanding Scholar-Athlete, Stetson later received his
medical degree from the University of Southern California School of
Medicine.
Stetson continued his volleyball career
after graduation, playing professionally on the beach and indoors and
was a five-time winner of the U.S. Open National Volleyball
Championships as a member of Team Nike while still in medical school.
He took a one year leave of absence from his medical studies to play
professionally in Europe where his team won the West German
Championship. For two years, he served as an assistant coach at
Southern California, when the team finished second at the NCAA
championships both years.
Stetson specializes in sports
medicine with an expertise in arthroscopic and reconstructive surgery
of the shoulder, knee, elbow and ankle. In addition to his medical
practice, Stetson has been an associate clinical professor of
orthopedic surgery in the Southern California Keck School of Medicine
for more than a decade. He is a member of numerous professional
societies including the American Medical Association and the American
Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Serving as team
physician for several high school and college teams throughout his
career, Stetson is currently a consulting physician for the USA Men’s
Volleyball Team. Devoted to clinical research and academic development,
he has presented research papers worldwide at orthopedic conferences
and makes appearances on television and radio talk shows. Additionally,
Stetson contributes articles for publications throughout the country.
In
conjunction with visits to Cuba and Haiti, Stetson recently started a
non-profit organization, Operation Arthroscopy, whose mission is to
teach and provide arthroscopic surgical equipment to third world
countries.
The
Silver Award winners are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, which
comprises eight athletics administrators at member institutions and
nationally distinguished citizens who are former student-athletes.
The
committee members are: Thomas J. Brown, commissioner, Great Lakes
Intercollegiate Athletic Conference; Cedric W. Dempsey, president
emeritus, NCAA; Timothy W. Gleason, commissioner, Ohio Athletic
Conference; Calvin Hill, consultant, Dallas Cowboys; Jackie
Joyner-Kersee, former University of California, Los Angeles, track and
field student-athlete and Olympian; Gibbs Knotts, faculty-athletics
representative, Western Carolina University; Julie Power Ruppert,
associate commissioner and senior woman’s administrator, America East
Conference; and Barbara G. Walker, Senior Associate Athletic Director,
Wake Forest University.