Courtesy: Kenyon College Athletics
GAMBIER, Ohio – Julia Wilson, a senior on the 2017-18 Kenyon College women’s swimming and diving team, was recently awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Her selection made her the Ladies swim program’s 33rd scholarship recipient, as well as the program’s 13th over the past decade.
The NCAA awards up to 174 Postgraduate Scholarships annually to student-athletes who excel academically and athletically and who are at least in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition. The one-time non-renewable scholarships of $7,500 are awarded three times a year corresponding to each sport season (fall, winter and spring), in which there are 29 scholarships available for men and 29 scholarships available for women.
Wilson, who graduated last weekend with a degree in psychology, plans to use the scholarship to help fund her studies in a doctorate program at Emory University, where she’ll narrow her focus to cognition and development, researching the neurocognitive basis of learning.
“The scholarship is really nice, it’s an honor to know that [Kenyon] and the NCAA think I deserve it,” Wilson said. “Kenyon has given me such amazing opportunities and this reflects how much the swim program and the school have given me.”
In the pool, Wilson was a career 16-time All-American with a dozen top-five finishes in NCAA Championship races. During the past season’s championship in Indianapolis, Indiana, Wilson had five All-America swims, including one with the Ladies’ title-winning 400-yard medley relay team.
Wilson is Kenyon’s and the North Coast Athletic Conference’s record-holder in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events. She was a 2017 Academic All-American as selected by members of the College Sports Information Directors of America and she’ll soon be named a four-time College Swimming Coaches Association of America Scholar All-American.
A 2016 Olympic Trials qualifier, Wilson is a member of both Phi Beta Kappa and Psi Chi, the international honor society in psychology.
Among all NCAA Division III institutions, Kenyon currently ranks second with a total of 82 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winners.