PREPARING FOR LIFE AFTER ATHLETICS
11/24/2020 9:27:00 AM | General, Student-Athlete Center for Excellence
Looking at the Faces Behind Baylor’s Graduation Success Rate
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Ten years ago, the NCAA debuted a commercial emphasizing that most of the 360,000-plus student-athletes "will be going pro in something other than sports."
"Over the last 100 years, the NCAA has helped millions of student-athletes find their power outside the field, court and rink."
That's certainly the case at Baylor, where athletic success is only one of the four pillars of Preparing Champions for Life. With a school-record score of 94%, Baylor led the Big 12 for the seventh-straight year and ranked ninth nationally among Power-5 schools in Graduation Success Rate.
"For us to set an all-time high is really special," said Baylor VP and Director of Athletics Mack B. Rhoades IV. "It's not like we set an all-time high, and that all-time high was underwhelming. Ninety-four percent is a pretty special mark and surpassing what was already a pretty special achievement in 91%. That's outstanding by our student-athletes, outstanding by our coaches and outstanding by our Student-Athlete Center for Excellence. Truly a team effort."
Turning pro is certainly a goal for All-American golfer Cooper Dossey, who finished the COVID-shortened 2020 season ranked No. 4 nationally, "but with the injuries that I've had in the past, I need a backup plan just in case golf doesn't work out."
"Having a degree was extremely important to me," he said. "Sometimes, academics came before golf, but it means a lot to see that the hard work I put into school paid off."
Along with track All-American Aaliyah Miller, softball's Maddison Kettler and football's Jalen Pitre, Dossey has followed a path over the last four years that has included success on and off the field of play, with all four completing undergrad degrees and starting work on a masters.
"When you think about Preparing Champions for Life, we are blessed to have this platform for four to five years," Rhoades said, "to do all we can to prepare our young people to be successful once they leave here, in all aspects of their life. A lot of our student-athletes are now getting not just that one degree, but they're getting that second degree or that masters, and really setting themselves up to be successful, to be influential, when they leave here."
'BEING A STUDENT-ATHLETE HAS SET ME UP FOR LIFE'
With the NCAA's decision to give spring-sport student-athletes an extra year of eligibility, Maddison Kettler could actually finish her master's in speech language pathology before she wraps up her softball playing career.
A fifth-year junior from West, she earned her undergrad degree in communication sciences and disorders in May and started doing clinicals this semester as she starts her speech pathology degree plan.
"I was very thankful that I graduated with my bachelor's here at Baylor, because it definitely means something, especially when you go through the application process," Kettler said. "A lot of people want Baylor students because of our work ethic and our academics that we have to go through here at Baylor University. Yes, graduating was a big accomplishment, but I think more of it was getting that acceptance letter for graduate school."
A member of the National Honor Society who graduated eighth in her class at West High School, Kettler said her discipline as a student-athlete began when she played for the Texas Glory select team.
"We were traveling every weekend, playing five to 10 games on the weekend, having to stay up late doing homework in the car," she said. "If we're being honest, being a student-athlete has pretty much set me up for life, and I'm starting to realize that now that I'm in graduate school and playing softball. I've learned how to time manage like never before."
After starting her post-grad program this summer, Kettler is on pace to finish in December 2021.
"I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do," said Kettler, who hit .429 in a COVID-shortened 2020 season after missing most of 2019 with an injury. "Essentially, I'm working with kids right now, which I did not think I would enjoy personally. I'm with preschoolers, and I absolutely love it."
Accepted for a spring externship with Baylor Scott & White in Temple, Kettler will be working with stroke and TDI (temporary disabled insurance) patients.
"I will be working really closely with the ICU there and also outpatients," she said, "so I'm interested to see if I want to go into the adult route, working with them in the hospital setting. But hopefully, we'll find that out once I get closer working with them in my externship."
THE DREAM IS TO BE A COLLEGE HEAD COACH
Starting with pee-wee football, players dream of getting to the biggest of stages and playing in the NFL one day.
Not so for Jalen Pitre, despite a breakout season that has seen him return his first two career interceptions for touchdowns in back-to-back games at Iowa State and Texas Tech and rank third on the team with 39 tackles.
"I want to be a college football coach," said Pitre, a fourth-year junior from Stafford, Texas. "My dream is to one day be a head college football coach and lead student-athletes like myself to be successful in the future."
Balancing his class load with football and even the rare down time, Pitre said he would be a "great fit for student-athletes, to help navigate them through that process."
The discipline that comes from being a student-athlete is a "big thing," he said, "but also just staying with the mindset of how you do anything is how you do everything."
"Maybe some people don't take academics as seriously, but I feel like that's the most important thing because that's the thing you will have for the longest."
Baylor football's lone commitment for the 2017 class when Matt Rhule was hired in December 2016, Pitre started eight games at linebacker as a true freshman and then made the move to the hybrid linebacker/safety STAR position this year.
Pitre, who graduated in August with a double major, said real estate and marketing "fit me well." He is now working on a master's in educational psychology.
"It was always an expectation for me to graduate," Pitre said. "When my graduation day came, it was eye-opening, because I remember when I first stepped on campus my first day and how the time has just flown by. I was grateful to see how all the hard work paid off."
Emily DeRatt, Director of Academic Services, "definitely kept me aligned with my goals and let me know that it was going to go fast, but to stay on top of things and everything would be OK," he said. "I give her a big shout out for keeping me on task and getting me to this point. Graduating was huge."
OLYMPIC TRIALS AND A 2ND DEGREE
Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in March, Aaliyah Miller was "in the best shape of my life" and geared up to make a bid for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
"I ended up actually redshirting indoors because I really wanted to make sure I limited the amount of running I did since it was an Olympic year," said Miller, who recorded a career-best 2:02.55 in winning the 800 meters as an unattached runner at an indoor meet in Ames, Iowa, in February. "My focus had definitely been Olympic Trials and peaking at the right time. When I ran my indoor PR, I was like, 'OK, I'm ready.'''
With her Olympic dreams on hold – the Games were moved to next summer – Miller was able to finish her undergrad degree in marketing in May and start working on a master's in sport management this fall.
"I've always had this feeling that whenever I am done with sports, I was still going to be involved in some way," she said. "I grew up around it, so I'm obviously not ready to let go of it – if I do have a professional career – once that goes away. I feel like this is the best-case scenario to set me up post-grad as a pro athlete and then eventually working in the professional sports industry or wherever my opportunities are."
Miller, who swept the Big 12 indoor and outdoor 800-meter titles as a freshman in 2018, said some of her best academic semesters have been when she was dealing with injuries.
"I find that really crazy, but I wasn't having to deal with stresses of practice and competing," she said. "I would channel that energy into recovering well, making sure I'm getting treatments. It wasn't like I was sitting around doing nothing. Honestly, when you're injured, you start reflecting on, 'What did I do that worked and what did I do that didn't work?' . . . it was definitely a learning experience."
As tough as it was seeing her 2020 season wiped out by COVID, Miller said it's "crazy how it all panned out . . . it's really a win-win for me," getting another year to train for the Olympics and a chance to finish a second degree.
'ACCOUNTING WAS NOT FOR ME'
Cooper Dossey thought he had it all planned out when he enrolled at Baylor in the fall of 2016 as an accounting major.
Fellow freshmen Colin Kober and Travis McInroe were also majoring in accounting, "and my mom's an accountant . . . but I quickly realized that accounting was not for me, and it was more for them and something my mom was good at, but not me."
Switching to communications as a sophomore, Dossey graduated in May 2020 and will have 27 hours toward his master's in sport management finished by the end of the 2021 season.
"I think it was the right choice for me. I didn't have a class with any of my teammates the last three years, but that ended up being a good thing, I guess, because I got to kind of break apart and meet some new people," he said.
Since discipline is "harder for me than it is for others," Cooper said it was important for him to stick to the same routine the last 4 ½ years – classes in the morning, golf in the afternoon and "the nighttime is when I study."
"But, I think the main encouragement for me every day is having nine or 10 other guys that are succeeding in the classroom," said Dossey, a GCAA All-America Scholar recipient who also became the first Baylor golfer to earn first-team All-America honors last year. "That really motivated me to manage my time well, get busy in the classroom and on the golf course. The way I manage my time is just learning from other people around me and finding out what works best for me and then sticking to that and not maneuvering from the routine."
An Austin native, Dossey put together a season to remember in 2019-20 with a school-record 69.72-stroke average and medalist honors at the Fighting Illini Invitational. With the NCAA's decision to grant spring-sport athletes another year of eligibility, he opted to come back this season, even though he graduated in May.
Of course, he also gets a chance to win a national championship with a team that won its second Big 12 Match Play Championship in the fall.
"It's an incredible opportunity, and I'm very thankful that I'll walk away from Baylor with two degrees," he said. "But at the root of everything, these guys and my coaches are some of my best friends. Two years down the road, I would have felt bad just leaving them and turning pro with, honestly, not a lot of opportunities right now in pro golf."
Baylor Bear Insider
Ten years ago, the NCAA debuted a commercial emphasizing that most of the 360,000-plus student-athletes "will be going pro in something other than sports."
"Over the last 100 years, the NCAA has helped millions of student-athletes find their power outside the field, court and rink."
That's certainly the case at Baylor, where athletic success is only one of the four pillars of Preparing Champions for Life. With a school-record score of 94%, Baylor led the Big 12 for the seventh-straight year and ranked ninth nationally among Power-5 schools in Graduation Success Rate.
"For us to set an all-time high is really special," said Baylor VP and Director of Athletics Mack B. Rhoades IV. "It's not like we set an all-time high, and that all-time high was underwhelming. Ninety-four percent is a pretty special mark and surpassing what was already a pretty special achievement in 91%. That's outstanding by our student-athletes, outstanding by our coaches and outstanding by our Student-Athlete Center for Excellence. Truly a team effort."
Turning pro is certainly a goal for All-American golfer Cooper Dossey, who finished the COVID-shortened 2020 season ranked No. 4 nationally, "but with the injuries that I've had in the past, I need a backup plan just in case golf doesn't work out."
"Having a degree was extremely important to me," he said. "Sometimes, academics came before golf, but it means a lot to see that the hard work I put into school paid off."
Along with track All-American Aaliyah Miller, softball's Maddison Kettler and football's Jalen Pitre, Dossey has followed a path over the last four years that has included success on and off the field of play, with all four completing undergrad degrees and starting work on a masters.
"When you think about Preparing Champions for Life, we are blessed to have this platform for four to five years," Rhoades said, "to do all we can to prepare our young people to be successful once they leave here, in all aspects of their life. A lot of our student-athletes are now getting not just that one degree, but they're getting that second degree or that masters, and really setting themselves up to be successful, to be influential, when they leave here."
'BEING A STUDENT-ATHLETE HAS SET ME UP FOR LIFE'
With the NCAA's decision to give spring-sport student-athletes an extra year of eligibility, Maddison Kettler could actually finish her master's in speech language pathology before she wraps up her softball playing career.
A fifth-year junior from West, she earned her undergrad degree in communication sciences and disorders in May and started doing clinicals this semester as she starts her speech pathology degree plan.
"I was very thankful that I graduated with my bachelor's here at Baylor, because it definitely means something, especially when you go through the application process," Kettler said. "A lot of people want Baylor students because of our work ethic and our academics that we have to go through here at Baylor University. Yes, graduating was a big accomplishment, but I think more of it was getting that acceptance letter for graduate school."
A member of the National Honor Society who graduated eighth in her class at West High School, Kettler said her discipline as a student-athlete began when she played for the Texas Glory select team.
"We were traveling every weekend, playing five to 10 games on the weekend, having to stay up late doing homework in the car," she said. "If we're being honest, being a student-athlete has pretty much set me up for life, and I'm starting to realize that now that I'm in graduate school and playing softball. I've learned how to time manage like never before."
After starting her post-grad program this summer, Kettler is on pace to finish in December 2021.
"I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do," said Kettler, who hit .429 in a COVID-shortened 2020 season after missing most of 2019 with an injury. "Essentially, I'm working with kids right now, which I did not think I would enjoy personally. I'm with preschoolers, and I absolutely love it."
Accepted for a spring externship with Baylor Scott & White in Temple, Kettler will be working with stroke and TDI (temporary disabled insurance) patients.
"I will be working really closely with the ICU there and also outpatients," she said, "so I'm interested to see if I want to go into the adult route, working with them in the hospital setting. But hopefully, we'll find that out once I get closer working with them in my externship."
THE DREAM IS TO BE A COLLEGE HEAD COACH
Starting with pee-wee football, players dream of getting to the biggest of stages and playing in the NFL one day.
Not so for Jalen Pitre, despite a breakout season that has seen him return his first two career interceptions for touchdowns in back-to-back games at Iowa State and Texas Tech and rank third on the team with 39 tackles.
"I want to be a college football coach," said Pitre, a fourth-year junior from Stafford, Texas. "My dream is to one day be a head college football coach and lead student-athletes like myself to be successful in the future."
Balancing his class load with football and even the rare down time, Pitre said he would be a "great fit for student-athletes, to help navigate them through that process."
The discipline that comes from being a student-athlete is a "big thing," he said, "but also just staying with the mindset of how you do anything is how you do everything."
"Maybe some people don't take academics as seriously, but I feel like that's the most important thing because that's the thing you will have for the longest."
Baylor football's lone commitment for the 2017 class when Matt Rhule was hired in December 2016, Pitre started eight games at linebacker as a true freshman and then made the move to the hybrid linebacker/safety STAR position this year.
Pitre, who graduated in August with a double major, said real estate and marketing "fit me well." He is now working on a master's in educational psychology.
"It was always an expectation for me to graduate," Pitre said. "When my graduation day came, it was eye-opening, because I remember when I first stepped on campus my first day and how the time has just flown by. I was grateful to see how all the hard work paid off."
Emily DeRatt, Director of Academic Services, "definitely kept me aligned with my goals and let me know that it was going to go fast, but to stay on top of things and everything would be OK," he said. "I give her a big shout out for keeping me on task and getting me to this point. Graduating was huge."
OLYMPIC TRIALS AND A 2ND DEGREE
Before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in March, Aaliyah Miller was "in the best shape of my life" and geared up to make a bid for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
"I ended up actually redshirting indoors because I really wanted to make sure I limited the amount of running I did since it was an Olympic year," said Miller, who recorded a career-best 2:02.55 in winning the 800 meters as an unattached runner at an indoor meet in Ames, Iowa, in February. "My focus had definitely been Olympic Trials and peaking at the right time. When I ran my indoor PR, I was like, 'OK, I'm ready.'''
With her Olympic dreams on hold – the Games were moved to next summer – Miller was able to finish her undergrad degree in marketing in May and start working on a master's in sport management this fall.
"I've always had this feeling that whenever I am done with sports, I was still going to be involved in some way," she said. "I grew up around it, so I'm obviously not ready to let go of it – if I do have a professional career – once that goes away. I feel like this is the best-case scenario to set me up post-grad as a pro athlete and then eventually working in the professional sports industry or wherever my opportunities are."
Miller, who swept the Big 12 indoor and outdoor 800-meter titles as a freshman in 2018, said some of her best academic semesters have been when she was dealing with injuries.
"I find that really crazy, but I wasn't having to deal with stresses of practice and competing," she said. "I would channel that energy into recovering well, making sure I'm getting treatments. It wasn't like I was sitting around doing nothing. Honestly, when you're injured, you start reflecting on, 'What did I do that worked and what did I do that didn't work?' . . . it was definitely a learning experience."
As tough as it was seeing her 2020 season wiped out by COVID, Miller said it's "crazy how it all panned out . . . it's really a win-win for me," getting another year to train for the Olympics and a chance to finish a second degree.
'ACCOUNTING WAS NOT FOR ME'
Cooper Dossey thought he had it all planned out when he enrolled at Baylor in the fall of 2016 as an accounting major.
Fellow freshmen Colin Kober and Travis McInroe were also majoring in accounting, "and my mom's an accountant . . . but I quickly realized that accounting was not for me, and it was more for them and something my mom was good at, but not me."
Switching to communications as a sophomore, Dossey graduated in May 2020 and will have 27 hours toward his master's in sport management finished by the end of the 2021 season.
"I think it was the right choice for me. I didn't have a class with any of my teammates the last three years, but that ended up being a good thing, I guess, because I got to kind of break apart and meet some new people," he said.
Since discipline is "harder for me than it is for others," Cooper said it was important for him to stick to the same routine the last 4 ½ years – classes in the morning, golf in the afternoon and "the nighttime is when I study."
"But, I think the main encouragement for me every day is having nine or 10 other guys that are succeeding in the classroom," said Dossey, a GCAA All-America Scholar recipient who also became the first Baylor golfer to earn first-team All-America honors last year. "That really motivated me to manage my time well, get busy in the classroom and on the golf course. The way I manage my time is just learning from other people around me and finding out what works best for me and then sticking to that and not maneuvering from the routine."
An Austin native, Dossey put together a season to remember in 2019-20 with a school-record 69.72-stroke average and medalist honors at the Fighting Illini Invitational. With the NCAA's decision to grant spring-sport athletes another year of eligibility, he opted to come back this season, even though he graduated in May.
Of course, he also gets a chance to win a national championship with a team that won its second Big 12 Match Play Championship in the fall.
"It's an incredible opportunity, and I'm very thankful that I'll walk away from Baylor with two degrees," he said. "But at the root of everything, these guys and my coaches are some of my best friends. Two years down the road, I would have felt bad just leaving them and turning pro with, honestly, not a lot of opportunities right now in pro golf."
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