By Harry Minium
HARTFORD, Conn.
It’s Tuesday night, and it’s already been a long day for the Old Dominion basketball team. The players attended class in the morning, had a late-morning practice, took a charter flight to New England and had dinner at 7 at the Hartford Airport Sheraton Hotel.
Some players then headed upstairs to watch basketball games on TV. But 10 headed to their rooms to collect their laptops, and returned to the banquet room where they ate dinner for a long night of studying.
Yes, the Monarchs are the toast of Hampton Roads after making the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight years. As with many college athletes, basketball is almost a full-time gig.
They practice, lift weights and watch film almost every day. They often go on road trips that take them away from school for three or four days at a time. They speak to the media, attend breakfasts and other events with fans.
To thousands of ODU fans, they are stars.
But they are still college students -- real college students who in spite of missing class, the pressure of playing big-time basketball and demands on their time, are expected to do well academically.
So two nights before ODU is slated to take on Purdue in the first round of the NCAA tournament, they were hunkered down, working on term papers, classwork they missed, turning in homework or reading online assignments.
Marquis Godwin says academic adviser Amy Lynch is like his "second mother."
Amy Lynch, an athletic academic adviser, is running the study hall, and it’s not an easy task. She goes from table to table, helping players login to the hotel wifi system, making sure they are working on the right assignments and answering dozens of questions.
She carries a list of assignments for each player. She gives guidance to some players who need help on research, but never gives them the answers to questions.
She prods them in the right direction. But they have to do the work themselves.
When a player finds a fact or snippet of information online, she says, “now put that in your words, and cite the source.”
For three hours, she rarely sits still for more than a few minutes.
At times, her job is a big like herding cats. You may think of the Monarchs as grown up men, but they’re really college kids, most not old enough to drink and some only a year out of high school.
They’re a lot more mature than I was at that age, but they are still easily distracted, especially if one belches or someone makes a joke.
“Focus, guys, let’s focus,” she says at least a dozen times.
Lynch is one of eight members of ODU’s academic performance staff, which is headed by senior woman administrator Ragean Hill. They are tasked with ensuring that the nearly 500 athletes at ODU do well academically.
Lynch, Jackie Barrow, Erin Cousins, Kristin Eden, Josh King, Lubbock Smith III and Sarah Walker and are the unsung heroes of ODU’s athletic department. They do the unseen and underappreciated work making sure every athlete from field hockey to football is on course to graduate.
“The academic people here are among the best I’ve worked with,” said coach Jeff Jones, who coached at the University of Virginia and American University before coming to ODU.
Nor is tutoring limited to athletes. ODU provides many its more than 24,000 students. Free online tutoring is available for hundreds of classes in 44 subject areas. ODU offers tutoring in most subjects, from the language learning center to the math and science resource center.
To learn about tutoring at ODU, click here.
The basketball players treat Lynch with the upmost respect. They call her “Miss Amy.”
Freshman Jason Wade gets some advice from Amy Lynch.
“Miss Amy, appreciate all you do for us,” guard B.J. Stith said as he went upstairs to his hotel room to take an online test, one that would be proctored back in Norfolk.
Miss Amy is a taskmaster. She spits fire when players pick up a cell phone. When players get bored, she encourages them to take a walk to clear their heads.
Nearly three hours after study hall began, Marquis Godwin yawns and shakes his head. “I’m so tired,” he says to me.
Godwin has a boatload of work to do. A paper to finish, questions to answer, notes to study. He’s doing a paper on whether excessive cell phone usage can cause cancer and he’s finding conflicting research on the issue.
“Keep at it Marquis,” she keeps saying to him, and he smiles back at her.
He and center Dajour Dickens, who wrote a term paper, are the last to finish.
“Dajour, did you write your conclusion?” she says after he packs up his laptop. He opens it and shows her the work. She smiles and they exchange a high-five.
“Miss Amy is almost like our second mother,” Godwin says. “She worries about us and that’s a good thing. That shows she cares about us. She wants us to do our best. She is dedicated. She stays up as late as we need her to.”
Academic advisers don’t just go on road trips. They hold office hours to consult with athletes every day.
“We walk in and three or four athletes are already in her office,” Godwin said. “But she knows how to make time for everybody. What she does is unseen. Nobody knows the work she does, the work any of the academic people do. But she’s really appreciated. If she doesn’t know that I hope people let her know because I know I do.”
Amy has four teams whose academic progress she measures – men’s basketball, baseball and men’s and women’s tennis. She’s relatively new to the job – a former elementary school teacher, she’s been at ODU only two years after spending 10 years as the athletic director of Norfolk’s Saint Patrick Catholic School.
After taking an extended leave of absence to take care of her oldest son, Stone, who was home-schooled for several months after suffering a soccer injury (he's now healthy and a senior soccer player at Maury High), she thought it was time for a change in careers.
College basketball isn't all glamour and glory. Five ODU basketball players hard at work late Tuesday night in study hall.
Hill hired her to with with Barrow in community engagements projects last year. This year, she was named an academic adviser.
She loves her work.
“These guys make such a huge commitment playing college basketball,” said Lynch who played Division III field hockey at Mary Washington. “I played college in sports and it was nothing compared to the responsibilities these guys have. It’s remarkable what they do with all that they juggle
“I get so excited when I see them have success. I helped Marquis study for a test and I was thrilled for him because he was so excited. I love to see each of them have success.
“They’re all fully capable of it. They’re each bright and smart kids and they really work hard.”
And the players love Miss Amy.
Freshman Joe Reece did a peer review for an English paper and finished a paper for an IT class. “Miss Amy was there to help me with every step,” Reece said. “She didn’t give me the answers, but pushed me in the right direction.
“She always makes sure we do outlines before we do a paper. That’s a big deal with her. It helps to make the papers better. She’s always pushing us to do better.”
Xavier Green, the MVP of the Conference USA tournament, acknowledged that Miss Amy is hard on them.
ODU freshman Kalu Ezikpe and Amy Lynch go over homework at Hartford.
“She needs to be hard on us,” he said. “We’re in college. We tend to get focused on other things besides school. Some of us are hard headed. That’s why she’s hard on us.
“Balancing school and basketball is hard. It can be difficult, both mentally and physically.
“Her getting on us, that’s her getting us to do the right thing.”
Not every athlete comes to ODU from an ideal academic background. Some come from broken homes and aren’t mentally prepared for the tremendous pressures of being a Division I athlete while also a college student.
“We hope those kids come here and find people who care about them and want them to succeed,” she said. “You encourage them to keep working, to keep trying and keep putting in the time and effort.
“You just love it when it pays off, when the light comes on and they recognize it was worth it for them to work so hard.”
As for Godwin, he determined that cell phone usage probably is harmful. The evidence isn’t conclusive, but he says it’s enough to make him wonder about how much time he spends looking down at his phone or walking around with it in his pocket.
“The great thing about Miss Amy is that she helped me on the research, helped me find the information, but after I did the research, I came to my own conclusion,” he said.
And isn’t that what going to college is supposed to be all about?
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu