Courtesy: UC San Diego Athletics
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Former UC San Diego diving standout Adam Burgasser is one of seven former student-athletes to receive the 2021 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award.
The Silver Anniversary Award annually honors distinguished individuals on the 25th anniversary of the conclusion of their college athletics careers. They are selected by representatives of NCAA members schools and conferences, along with a panel of former student-athletes, based on their collegiate and professional achievements.
Along with Burgasser, the 2021 recipients are Michelle Cusimano Vachris (Virginia), Michelle M. Marciniak (Tennessee), Fernando Palomo (Texas A&M), Amy E. Reinhard (Harvard), Dan Rooney (Kansas), and Shareef Abdur-Rahim (Cal).
Burgasser’s impressive diving career with the Tritons was highlighted by his victory at the NCAA Championship in 1996. He compiled a score of 483.30 points on the 3-meter board to earn the national crown in his senior season as well as the title of NCAA DIII National Diver of the Year. The year prior, Burgasser was one of four student-athletes to break the NCAA record with his score on the 1-meter board. Throughout his career from 1993-96, Burgasser was a seven-time All-American.
Burgasser is no stranger to NCAA recognition. In 1997, he was honored with the NCAA’s prestigious Top VIII Award — now the Today’s Top 10 Award — for his athletic and academic accomplishments during his time at UC San Diego.
Today, Burgasser has returned to his roots and works as a professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Physics. He is best known for leading the definition of the T spectral class, discovering metal-poor halo L subdwarfs, investigating the remarkable L dwarf/T dwarf transition, and as co-discoverer of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system – seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Burgasser has shared his findings with the United States Congress.
Receiving the Silver Anniversary Award has led Burgasser to think back on his experiences as an undergraduate at UC San Diego and how they continue to impact him today.
“I think it’s really stimulated a lot of reflectance on that time in my life and how important it was to go through these athletic experiences,” said Burgasser. “The kind of ‘failing’ in my junior year and then coming back and winning [the NCAA Championship] my senior year, that resilience and persistence is incredibly important for anyone in any part of their careers, whatever their careers are.
“It also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the people that helped me at that time and those lessons that continue to this day,” Burgasser added. “I had really fantastic teammates, all of whom were also fantastic athletes and champions in their own right… There are teammates, but there’s also all the coaches. You go back and you think… what did each of them teach me or instill in me or model for me in terms of being a successful adult?”
Burgasser is the first former student-athlete in UC San Diego history to be honored with the Silver Anniversary Award. He will be recognized with the other Silver Anniversary honorees during a virtual Honors Celebration awards show on Wednesday, Jan. 13. The show will be streamed at 4 p.m. on the NCAA Twitter account and on the ESPN app.