University of Tennessee Athletics
Inside The T - Changing Lives
December 19, 2014 | General
By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
It seems obvious to say, but a college graduation is a special moment for everyone involved. For a student, parents and everyone that helped along the way, donning the cap and gown and making a triumphant walk across the stage is a proud moment that no one ever forgets.
For the student-athletes at the University of Tennessee, it's an even more special moment. Twenty-one of those student-athletes made that walk last Saturday and the crowd that came to see them told the story of just how special it was.
The athletics department and the Thornton Athletics Student Life Center have long held a breakfast to honor the graduates and their families prior to each semester's commencement exercises. A look around the room during that gathering tells an incredible story of hard work and perseverance. It also tells a great story of pride.
For the great moments the athletes assembled had on the field or court, their families were there cheering. They wore t-shirts and jerseys and carried signs or even big head posters for their athletes while sitting in the stands at competitions. On Saturday, the same family members that became familiar faces in the stands wore simply smiles, beaming with pride for the accomplishments above and beyond what they did as athletes.
For all the attention the competitions get, the ultimate reason the student-athletes come to Tennessee is to earn the degree for the work in the classroom. It is the first thing that coaches sell in the living rooms on the recruiting trail to the parents and grandparents. Fame as an athlete is fleeting, a degree is forever.
And it's important for everyone. The special thing about earning an athletic scholarship is having the opportunity to earn that degree at no cost to the student-athlete and their family. It can be the payoff for years of family support for a budding athlete's youth career. It can also be the means for the first person in a family to even attend college.
In that room is where all of those walks of life come together before the culmination of their academic careers. Some families look up and see a graduation that they always expected take place. There are tears of joy in that. For some families, they look up and see a day they honestly never knew if they would see. There are tears of joy in that as well.
Sharing in the moment are the coaches and support staff that helped it all come together. You see coaches beam with a similar pride as the parents do while watching the boys and girls they recruited from high school walk out of college as men and women. Hours and hours of practices and competitions helped make that transition away from the classroom.
But much the same way senior day is the culminating moment for the student-athlete relationship with their coaches, graduation day is the moment to share with the counselors and tutors that helped make that day happen. The staff of the Thornton Center, led by Dr. Joe Scogin, makes graduation day a successful celebration for the student-athletes and their families, just as coaches do for senior day.
No matter the field of study the student-athlete chooses or the academic background that they bring to UT, the Thornton Center staff builds the athletes up and gives them the tools and guidance to succeed.
In writing my feature story on graduation day, I talked to several of our graduates at the breakfast about what the day and the degree meant to them. One of our athletes that I spoke with turned very emotional toward the end of our conversation. He didn't want to be mentioned by name, but told me he never expected to graduate when he came to campus. He said he didn't know if he had it in him to do it. I asked what changed. He pointed to the Thornton Staff lined up at the entrance. "They did it," he said. "They changed my life."
And that's what it's all about.
