INDIANAPOLIS – University of Indianapolis senior diver Payton Staman and Missouri S&T football senior DeShawn Jones have earned a share of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award as the league’s male athlete of the year, the Conference office announced Tuesday.
The awards are bestowed annually by the GLVC to one male and one female student-athlete that display academic excellence, athletic ability and achievement, character, and leadership. It is named in honor of former GLVC Commissioner, as well as, coach and director of athletics at Saint Joseph's College. This year, for the third time in league history, there was a tie in voting for the men’s award. Conversely, for the first time in the Conference annals, there was also a tie in voting for the women’s award, and those co-winners will be announced tomorrow, May 20.
Under normal circumstances, these two would have been formally recognized this week at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Awards Banquet at the Drury Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, but, with the cancellation of the league’s in-person reception due to COVID-19, the GLVC will work with UIndy and Missouri S&T to present the awards to both honorees.
Staman was a four-year member of the UIndy swimming & diving team and is just the second Greyhound to earn the Conference’s top honor. Tennis standout Scott Riggle was recognized after the 1998-99 academic year. The senior earned All-GLVC and All-America accolades every year during his career, including winning back-to-back GLVC Diver of the Year awards in 2019 and 2020. As a freshman, Staman won the 1-meter board gold medal and placed second on the 3-meter board for first- and second-team All-GLVC honors. He followed that by becoming a two-time national qualifier in both the 1m and 3m boards, earning first-team All-America honors by placing fifth place on the 3-meter. During his second season, the product of Roscoe, Illinois, was a second-team All-GLVC diver with a pair of second-place finishes on the 1- and 3-meter boards before respective sixth- and seventh-place results at the NCAA Championship to twice become a first-team All-American. In his junior year, Staman repeated as a first-team All-American with a third-place finish on the 3-meter and runner-up result on the 1-meter, which was preceded by a gold medal and All-GLVC first-team laurels in both events at the league meet. While he was unable to perform at the NCAA meet this year after competition was suspended due to COVID-19, he did still defend his 1- and 3-meter GLVC titles in early February and was later named a CSCAA All-American first-team member in both events. Each of his postseason efforts at the Conference Championship helped his team to third place in 2017, followed by a three-peat title in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Additionally, the Greyhounds were third-place finishers in both the 2018 and 2019 national events. Moreover, the team captain individually broke school records three out of his four years competing, including most recently a six-dive score of 375.82 and an 11-dive score of 579.95 on the 1-meter, the latter of which was a new GLVC Championship standard to best his own mark from the year before (515.20).
The Engineering major was nearly perfect during his tenure in Indianapolis with a 3.92 overall GPA, which helped him accumulate various academic honors. He earned a spot on the Dean’s List all eight semesters; was the 2016-17 Howard D. Colman Scholar and the 2019 UIndy Kelso Reid Mental Attitude Award winner, as well as, the Central Indiana Technology and Environmental Society (CITES) Scholarship Winner; named to the 2019 CoSIDA Academic All-America First Team and eligible to garner his fourth-straight CSCAA All-American Scholar and Academic All-GLVC merit; nabbed the Richard G. Lugar Academic Recognition Award and will be up for the GLVC Council of Presidents' Academic Excellence Award later this year.
In addition to his athletic and academic endeavors, Staman served his community and campus in many different ways. He spent four years as a Grassroots Church Ministries volunteer, was a three-year Swimming Special Olympics coordinator, volunteered as an audio and visual technician at The Well Church for two years, and was the UIndy Swim & Dive Community Service Team Leader in 2018 and 2019. This year, he participated in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and was a volunteer for and member of the Indianapolis Disc Golf Club.
Jones, a two-time GLVC Scholar-Athlete in football, is S&T’s fourth Paragon honoree and second in the last four years. The most recent Miner to be honored was Keith Sponsler in 2016, while GLVC Hall of Famer Jordan Henry was the school’s first in 2009, and 2013 saw Spencer Brinkmeyer win. During his four-year career, Jones was a three-time All-GLVC pick and was named an All-American as a sophomore by the Associated Press and D2Football.com after a D2CCA All-Super Region 3 nod. The running back helped the Miners go 29-16 overall and 19-10 in Conference play during his time in Rolla and, as a junior, helped the Miners win their first postseason contest since 1950 by defeating Minnesota State Moorhead, 51-16, in the Mineral Water Bowl. Jones closed out his senior season on the field as the all-time leading rusher in school history with 3,493 yards and 39 rushing touchdowns – which is also an S&T career record. He ranked third in the Conference in rushing with a team-high 831 yards and 11 touchdowns during 2019 and added nine receptions for 69 yards and a TD to accumulate 900 all-purpose yards, which ranked second on the team.
In the 2019-20 academic year, the senior earned an unblemished 4.00 GPA in the fall and maintained a mark in the spring good enough for a 3.55 overall GPA. In addition, Jones garnered CoSIDA Academic All-District and All-America laurels for the third time in his career. He’s also a Dean’s List member, three-time recipient of S&T’s Joe Mooney Distinguished Student Award, a member of the Phi Sigma biological sciences honor society, and eligible for his fourth Academic All-GLVC award and the GLVC Council of Presidents Academic Excellence award for 2019-20.
Outside of football and academics, the Olympia Fields, Illinois, native also spent countless hours serving his fellow students and the local community. He served as vice president in both the Association for Black Success and Phi Sigma Honors Society, and was the president for the National Society of Leadership and Success. Jones was a mentor for both the “Mentoring Makes a Difference” program at a local elementary school and the Missouri S&T Student Diversity and Inclusion group that helped new students adjust to their new environment. He also was a STEM educator for Missouri S&T, teaching STEM-related projects at Rolla Middle School, and spent time as a crewmember for an organization that provides support for pediatric cancer patients and families called “Love Your Melons.” Additionally, Jones worked for Phelps Health as a Patient Care Assistant and was as an office assistant for the Illinois Home Health Agency in Chicago.