By Harry Minium
Athletes have so many demands on their time, from practice to team meetings to long road trips. They often miss class, which means they must spend time in a hotel, plane, bus or holed up in study hall catching up.
If they graduate with an undergraduate degree in four years you know they are hard workers who made academics a priority.
But then there are others who push the edge of the envelope and go on to earn a master's degree. ODU has 19 athletes who pushed that envelope and are enrolled in graduate school, including seven football players and three each from the rowing and baseball teams.
Wide receiver Eric Kumah, who graduated from Virginia Tech in three years before transferring to ODU, is working on a master's degree in education. Defensive back Joe Joe Headen is working on a master's degree in public administration and tackle Isaac Weaver and defensive end Derek Wilder have two undergraduate degrees and are working on master's degrees.
Brett Smith (baseball) and Danny Durkin (men's soccer) are enrolled in engineering programs while Brooke Pilkington (master's of education) and Holly Hutchinson (master's in lifespan and digital communications), the best players on ODU's women's tennis team, are also in graduate school.
But the most remarkable ODU athletes of all are football quarterback Messiah deWeaver and women's basketball forward Maggie Robinson.
Both are in ODU's Strome Master of Business Administration program and it's extremely rare for any athlete to pursue an MBA while still playing.
Getting into an MBA program isn't as difficult as getting into medical or law schools, but it's close. ODU's program requires a minimum of 45 credit hours, with nine to 12 hours a semester considered a full-time load, and generally an outstanding academic record and two years of work experience.
MBA graduates are in demand for companies seeking chief executive officers, directors of human resources or chief financial officers. MBA programs enroll only the best, and clearly, Robinson and de Weaver are the crème-de-la-crème.
Women's basketball player Maggie Robinson
"They are in the classroom with high level people, executives from Norfolk Southern and other corporations," said Ron Moses, an associate athletic director who heads ODU's academic advising team.
"They are not only going to learn from the professors, but from all the people around them."
Robinson began taking MBA classes a few weeks ago and says she's already learned valuable lessons.
"I am seeing so many people with different stories, different backgrounds, to people with different undergraduate degrees to people who have been in the business world for years," she said.
"I'm learning from hearing their stories, their perspectives."
They aren't the first athletes to enter the MBA program at ODU. Football player Rob Thompson began the program as a redshirt senior in 2017 and graduated in 2018. His MBA opened doors for him. He is now a talent acquisition specialist at Norfolk's Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters and did the same job at Dollar Tree before that.
Robinson and deWeaver transferred to ODU from junior colleges, but deWeaver had the harder road. He was a 4-star quarterback in high school who signed with Michigan State. His high school academic record in Dayton, Ohio was so good that he was admitted to Michigan State's prestigious Eli Broad School of business as a freshman.
He transferred to East Mississippi College after his freshman year, and yes, that's the school that was featured in 2015 on the Netflix show, Last Chance U. deWeaver helped the Lions win a national title as a sophomore in 2018.
He then came to ODU in December of 2018 after graduating with an associate degree in just one semester. Unfortunately, he lost credit for classes that would not transfer. Yet he earned his undergraduate degree in just a year at ODU and began the MBA program in January.
"Messiah took advantage of the opportunities that Old Dominion offered him," Moses said. "He took extra classes and was so focused.
"For him to come in here, graduate in a year and still have a whole year and a half in the MBA program is amazing. What he did was really, really hard."
Moses says he is among the youngest ever enrolled in the University's MBA program.
Both he and Robinson had to hustle to get enrolled. deWeaver had tests to take, essays to turn in, work experience to document and meetings to schedule. Moses said he took care of that by himself, even though ODU's academic team offered to help.
Both he and Robinson met with Jeff Tanner, dean and a professor of marketing in the Strome College of Business, and President John R. Broderick before they were accepted.
deWeaver had a 3.6 grade point average this past spring taking all of his classes online. And online doesn't mean easy – the Princeton Review rates ODU's online MBA program the 25th best in the nation.
Robinson's path was more straightforward. The Mobile, Ala. native came to ODU from Shelton State Community College, a 15-minute drive from the University of Alabama. She helped lead Shelton to back-to-back junior college Final Fours and graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. She was twice named a first-team academic All-American.
All her courses transferred, and she graduated from ODU on time in May with a biology degree.
She didn't have a lot of business experience, so she applied for a waiver into ODU's MNA program that is based on her academic record. ODU requires a minimum 3.6 GPA for admission in that waiver program, interviews and an essay, among other things. She cleared the GPA minimum with no problem.
Because she was injured in 2018-19 and redshirted last season, she will be a redshirt senior this year. That gives her an extra year to play basketball and study. She's toying with going to dental school and decided that an MBA would prepare her to run a business if she decides to set up her own practice.
"Having an MBA also gives me more options if I decide not to go to dental school," she said.
deWeaver is a "first gen" student, meaning he is among the first in his family to earn a college degree. ODU is among the nation's leaders in graduating first-gen students.
His two older sisters have master's degrees and his younger sister, now in middle school, also plans to go to college. His father is a businessman and his mother a nurse who got her degree at a technical school.
"They are smart people who didn't have the chance to go to college, but they've had the joy of seeing their children do that," he said. "They raised us right."
deWeaver is undecided on what to do when he's done with football. He's thinking of working with a sports agency, on Wall Street or as a college football recruiting coordinator.
He has some advice for incoming freshmen.
"Doing well academically is really about how you start as a freshman," he said. "If you get off to a slow start, it's harder to work your way back up. But if you're on a mission and start strong, you'll finish strong."
The moral here is to take your studies seriously from your first day on campus.
Robinson enrolled in summer school in May to take five classes (for seven credit hours) thinking she was the only athlete working on an MBA. At most schools, she would have been.
But while listening to a series of online presentations recently, she heard de Weaver speak and identify himself as a football player.
"I was so surprised," she said. "That was so great to hear. I thought I was the only athlete in the program."
"That's such a credit to both of them," Moses added.
"They are remarkable young people doing remarkable things."
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu
ODU Athletes in Graduate School
Football
Joe Joe Headen, M.P.A. (Public Administration)
Eric Kumah, M.S.Ed. (Coaching Education)
Marcus Joyner, M.S. (Sports Management)
Isaac Weaver, M.P.H. (Public Health)
Derek Wilder, M.S. (Sports Management)
Jordan Young, M.S. (Sports Management)
Messiah deWeaver, M.B.A. (Business Administration)
Baseball
Michael Paramentier, M.S. (Sports Management)
Brett Smith, M.E. (Biomedical Engineering)
Tom Scheffler, M.S. (Maritime Trade and Supply Chain Management)
Women's Tennis
Brooke Pilkington, M.S.Ed (Coaching Education)
Holly Hutchinson, M.A. (Lifespan and Digital Communications
Men's Tennis
Tomislav Podvinski, M.S. (Maritime Trade and Supply Chain Management)
Women's Basketball
Maggie Robinson, M.B.A (Business Administration)
Men's Soccer
Daniel Durkin, .M. (Engineering Management)
Rowing
Rasheeda Anderson, M.S.Ed. (Elementary Education)
Amanda Ruck, M.S. (Cybersecurity)
Talya Cohen, M.S.Ed. (Elementary Education)
Volleyball
Alessia Sgherza, M.S.Ed. (Coaching Education)
Minium: Maggie Robinson, Messiah deWeaver Among 19 ODU Athletes in Graduate Programs
