EVANSVILLE, Ind. – With the 2013-14 athletic season underway, it is time to look back and honor two of the top student-athletes at the University of Evansville a season ago.
Each season, the athletics department honors its top male and female student-athletes for their efforts in athletics, academics and citizenship and the recipients of the awards this season did just that. Kelby Jenkins won the Ida M. Stieler Award while Colt Ryan received the William V. Slyker Award for the second season in a row.
Ryan finished his career at UE as the top scorer in program history with 2,279 points. His total also made its impact on the record book in the Missouri Valley Conference as his total put him in sixth place. In each of his last two years with the Aces, Ryan earned first team All-Conference honors while being named the MVC Scholar Athlete of the Year in both campaigns.
In his record-breaking night against Canisius in the CIT, he tallied a season-high 39 points while breaking Larry Humes' scoring mark in the first half. The Batesville, Ind. product finished his career as the all-time steals leader for UE while averaging 20.1 points per game as a senior, a total that was 2nd in the Valley and 15th in the NCAA. He finished with a 3.60 GPA.
While Ryan will go down as one of the top men's basketball players in program history, Kelby Jenkins has done her best to rewrite the cross country record books in her first three seasons. Not only does Jenkins hold a perfect 4.0 GPA, but she has developed her running in each season at Evansville, culminating in one of the top individual performances in any sports in the history of Evansville Athletics.
Jenkins won four events in her junior campaign of 2012 while finishing in the top seven in all but one event. The one race that she did not finish in the top seven, she only went on to break the school record in the 6K NCAA's taking 33rd out of 218 runners with her time of 21:11. That effort was almost a minute faster than the previous UE record.
Prior to that, Jenkins set her PR at the 5K MVC Championship as her time of 17:38 was the second-best time in school history. Her wins in 2012 included the Mid-America Opener, EIU Open, Tennessee Tech Invitational and the UE Invitational.
