Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Two-sport athletes on the fast track to success, in college and after college

By Genna Hilgenbrink


There are football players, basketball players, and track athletes, but every so often, there’s an individual who is more than one. Two-sport athletes are of a different breed at Hillsdale College. They endure the rigorous academics while attending physically exhausting practices for two sports, sometimes all even in the same day. These athletes have learned to balance team time with study time, basketball workouts with track meets or even compromising precious sleeping time for study time. It is a challenge that few attempt, let alone accomplish. Being a Division II athlete for one sport is no easy task, but two? Impressive.
NCAA Division II athletics prides itself in promoting the life in the balance, where a student can get the most out of a college education while competing, athletically, at a high level. However, select students at Hillsdale College have undertaken not one sport, but two, in addition to the challenging academic standards this school demands. In fact, Hillsdale College was ranked 60th in the nation and 7th in the Midwest by Forbes for academic difficulty. However, any student on campus can tell you that it’s a tough institution, but ask those who play two sports at Hillsdale to get new perspective, athletes like Katie Bildner and Will Danko.
 During the school year, there are only a couple weeks of rest for Katie, a senior who played four seasons for the Charger women’s basketball team, and is now entering her third and final track season this spring. The forward in the winter and jumper in the spring from Comstock Park, Michigan, enjoys the challenge.
“I really like playing 2 sports! But I would say that the hardest part is how hard it is on your body to do the workouts for both teams at the same time,” she said. “My post season for basketball overlaps with track season. We are expected to do both workouts.” The women’s basketball season typically ends near the first week of March, only three week before the start of outdoor track season.
Through her career, however, there were rare instances when Katie had time off. She usually has about one week after school starts in the fall, and maybe a week or two after basketball is finished that are not filled with lifting, practices, or games.
Training for basketball and track were not the same for Katie. In order to manage, she had to give priority to one over the other. Basketball, being a team sport with many games during the season, requires lifting, conditioning, individual workouts in the fall, followed by games in the winter, more lifting and conditioning in the spring, and individual workouts in the summer. Jumping, being an individual event with fewer meets throughout the year would require less attention than basketball but still holds a major part in her year. Actually, Katie was on scholarship for basketball, so naturally, it took some priority, regardless, Katie also only started track at Hillsdale as a sophomore. Despite the work load, and missed classes, Katie managed to get the most out of her four years at Hillsdale by committing herself to not one, but two Division II level teams at Hillsdale College.
Although Katie will be graduating this spring, she looks forward to one last season in outdoor track.
 “It was nice knowing I still had another season of athletics left when basketball ended,” she said. “It helped ease the pain knowing that I had something to look forward to!” After Katie finishes her 2012 outdoor track season, she will join an elite group of graduates who competed in two sports through her career.
Will Danko, is another one of these few athletes who took on two sports in their years in college and in his four years at Hillsdale he found a way to be very successful academically. Danko is a football player and track sprinter who will also be graduating in the spring and has been accepted into the University of Michigan’s pharmaceutical school, where he will continue his education in the fall.
When asked how he manages his intense studies while competing in two sports at Hillsdale, Danko said: “My sleep suffers more than the school work. I always find a way to get my work done, it's just a matter of what time I'll be getting to bed at night.” Sacrificing sleep rather than his studies got Danko into the seventh-ranked pharmacy program in the country according to U.S. News and World Report.
Danko was named to the GLIAC All-Academic Team in both football and track during his career, and thanks to his 3.6 overall grade point average, earned a spot on the prestigious GLIAC Academic Excellence Team in the Fall of 2011. In 2010 Danko’s  4x100 relay team was the GLAIC runner-ups and through his four years William was one of the fastest players on the football team and played defensive back. Over the past four years, Danko has tended to focus on football heavily. He says, “I came to this school as a football player initially and joined track during my sophomore year here.”  He goes on to say, “Football definitely takes up more time and energy overall, but track training requires a lot more patience and fine-tuning of the small things during training.” However, in the winter Danko gets the best of both worlds competing in both track and football having four to five lifting/agility football practices, while having two to three track practices in the same week.
Since he will be graduating in May, Danko is happy to have one more season left in his college career with track. He says that, “Track is a little more chill than football, so it should be an easier transition into after-college plans”. He will have a major transition come fall, with beginning pharmaceutical school at the University of Michigan, but with all of the practice he has had balancing school, sports, and sleeping, he will be in good shape to take on pharmacy school.
Two more current Hillsdale College students have also achieved great things in two different sports, as well as the classroom. Amanda Geelhoed completed her athletic career with the Charger volleyball team in December 2011. In addition to winning three conference titles and one regional championship in volleyball, she spent most of the 2009-10 season as Bildner’s teammate on the women’s basketball team. The two of them, who each hail from the Grand Rapids area, were shooting partners in practice, so they could easily relate to one another’s two-sport experiences.
Geelhoed immediately entered the frontcourt rotation when she joined the team in December 2009, and actually set a school record during her one season. She went 7-for-7 from the field in a 74-69 win over Lake Superior State on Jan. 30, 2010. She holds the record for most field goals made in a game without a miss.
Geelhoed has also earned Academic All-GLIAC status, and will graduate in May with an overall GPA above 3.0.
Nate English was a linebacker on the Charger football team from 2007-10, and has been a significant part of the throwers on the indoor and outdoor track teams in his career. He hit a high point in his athletic career in March 2012 when he earned his first career All-American honor, finishing eighth overall at the 2012 NCAA Division II Indoor Track and Field Championships with a shot put throw of 16.82 meters. It was an appropriate cap to an athletic career that started right here in Hillsdale, competing for the Hornet football and track teams, where he was a state champion shot putter.
English is also one of the athletic department’s top student-athletes, joining Danko on the GLIAC Academic Excellence list in 2011-12. The math major is carrying an overall GPA of 3.670 into his final semester at the college.
All of these athletes have shown great endurance through their four years at Hillsdale College. It is not an easy task managing the demands of two sports while attending a rigorous institution like Hillsdale. The skills they developed over the past four years will serve them well as they move onto the next phase of their lives.