INDIANAPOLIS - Maryville University wrestling student-athlete Tyler Harrington and University of Indianapolis cross country/track & field student-athlete Mickayla Wenzel have been named as the inaugural Great Lakes Valley Conference Postgraduate Scholarship recipients, it was announced by the Conference office on Thursday. The GLVC Postgraduate Scholarship is awarded to one male and one female each year in the amount of $2,500 each to be used in the first year of post-graduate enrollment at the institution of their choice.
In his three years at Maryville, Harrington has earned numerous academic and athletic achievements as a member of the Saints wrestling program while double majoring in Mathematics and Secondary Education with aspirations to pursue a Master's degree in education with an emphasis on STEM at Maryville. Academically, he holds a 3.767 GPA and has earned seven Dean's List accolades and three National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) All-Academic Team honors, additionally winning the 2017-18 Maryville 4.0 Award and GLVC Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar Award. His efforts in the classroom also aided the Saints to a NWCA All-Academic Team National Championship for having the top team GPA in Division II (3.556). Athletically this season, the 165-pound junior was a NCAA Division II Super Region IV third-place finisher and garnered fourth at the NCAA Championships to distinguish himself as an All-American. At the National event, he tied for first with the most falls (3). Those postseason performances followed his recognition as an All-GLVC first-team pick as well as a nomination as the GLVC James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Award honoree in the sport for Maryville in 2018-19. Harrington also earned five Maryville Athlete of the Week awards in his career and one GLVC Wrestler of the Week laurel last season. In his collegiate debut, the Lincolnshire, Ill., native was named the Most Outstanding Freshman, picked up the Most Major Decisions Award, and won the Dr. Lombardi Saint Award.
In the community, on and off campus, Harrington has volunteered for the Maryville Reaches Out program, first with the Salvation Army and then with the Jackie Joyner Kersee Community Center the last two years. He has been a four-time Maryville Best Buddies Peer Buddy, while participating on the Maryville Campus Activities Board, first as a Board Member, then as the Weekends Committee Officer and, most recently, as the Marketing Executive Officer. Lastly, in the past two years, Harrington has been a member of the Maryville Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).
Wenzel, a member of both the Indianapolis cross country and track & field teams, gleaned school, GLVC, and NCAA merits throughout her four-year career. In 2016, she was picked as the cross country Kelso Reid Mental Attitude Award Winner and followed in the spring of 2017 with identical recognition for track & field. In the same cross country season, she won Most Improved before being named the team MVP the very next year. This past cross country campaign, her accolades continued to pile up, as she was a team captain and earned All-GLVC for finishing eighth (22:36) at the Championship event as well as NCAA All-Region for placing 12th (22:09) in the regional race. Most recently, the distance runner won first-team All-GLVC indoor and outdoor track honors, respectively winning the distance medley relay (12:20.77) and the 1,500-meter run in a provisional qualifying time of 4:33.87. She's also part of the foursome that holds the school's DMR record (12:14.80) that was set earlier in the year on Jan. 26. In the classroom, the product of Francesville, Ind., is a two-time United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCA) All-Academic team member (2017 and 2018) and a three-time Academic All-GLVC honoree while on track to conclude her career with one more. She's also a member of the honors societies Alpha Chi and Phi Alpha Epsilon, was awarded the Strain Honors College Spring Term International Travel Grant, and is a member of the National Society of Leadership and Success. The senior also leads the UIndy chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. As a volunteer, Wenzel serves as a counselor for the Ark Christian Ministries summer camp each year and has also participated with Girls, Inc. where she teaches weekly lessons about finance.
Wenzel studied psychology and Spanish at UIndy and accumulated a near-perfect 3.977 GPA. She plans to pursue her Master's degree in speech-language pathology at Indiana University in the fall and aspires to work in a rural hospital with clients of all ages and disorders.
In order to qualify for consideration, the nominee must graduate by the end of the academic season - or by the end of the summer - of the application year, must have earned a cumulative grade point average of 3.3 (on a 4.0 grading scale), have competed in a GLVC-sponsored sport for at least two years, and be a member of a team in the year the scholarship is awarded. Each member institution may nominate one male and one female from their respective institution.