{"id":203,"date":"2020-05-21T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T16:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.wp.nau.edu\/aspirations-campaign\/unde-molestiae-voluptas-dolores\/"},"modified":"2023-04-11T15:59:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T15:59:29","slug":"student-athlete-balances-volleyball-academics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/student-athlete-balances-volleyball-academics\/","title":{"rendered":"A deep set with sports and academics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The life of a student-athlete requires a complex balancing act between the rigorous demands of academics and sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Abby Stomp wouldn\u2019t have it any other way. A Biology<\/a> major with a minor in Chemistry<\/a>, she distinguished herself as a standout athlete on the volleyball team throughout her distinguished NAU career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can’t imagine going to college and not playing a sport,\u201d she said. \u201cI’ve been able to travel to Europe, and I’ve been to so many places in America that have just been amazing. I think sports have given me a really amazing opportunity to see different parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She said that while she was working hard to keep up a 4.00 GPA, her professors\u2014particularly Jani Ingram<\/a>, Professor of analytical and environmental chemistry\u2014were supportive and worked with her volleyball schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ve had a lot of great teachers who have been flexible with my traveling,\u201d Stomp said. \u201cAnd taking online classes definitely helped me balance a lot of the workload. But other than that I’ve always really cared about school, and my parents have always stressed that volleyball is a gift on top of school and academics will affect me for forever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abby is from a close-knit family in Albuquerque and said leaving home to go to school wasn\u2019t easy. NAU was a good choice for her, she said, because of the volleyball program and relative proximity to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m super close to my family so I wanted something that wasn’t too far away, but that I also got to learn some independence, and kind of grow into my own person a little bit. And NAU was the perfect fit; it had a volleyball program that I was super interested in, and I was lucky enough to be able to make it on the team and that’s what brought me here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abby now has her sights set on graduate school where she aspires to a master\u2019s degree in secondary education in preparation for a career as a high school science teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while she\u2019s justifiably proud of her 4.00 GPA and her team\u2019s Big Sky volleyball win, Abby said her proudest accomplishment at NAU has been growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m most proud of how I’ve grown as a person,\u201d she said. \u201cI’m really close to my family, so leaving was a really big deal for me. But I think I really found my way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After winning a Big Sky volleyball championship with her team and earning a 4.00, Abby Stomp has surpassed her ambitions as a student-athlete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":532,"featured_media":1037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[9,10],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5692,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/5692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}