INDIANAPOLIS – Missouri S&T senior swimming standout Keith Sponsler and Rockhurst University senior volleyball star Whitney Kostal have earned the Great Lakes Valley Conference’s Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award as the league’s male and female athlete of the year, the Conference office announced Thursday.
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.
Sponsler and Kostal will be recognized Tuesday, May 24, at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Awards Banquet at the Drury Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri.
Sponsler is the third Missouri S&T male, and fourth overall Miner, to be recognized as the Conference’s top student-athlete and the second in four years, joining Jordan Henry from 2008-09 as well as Spencer Brinkmeyer and Jennifer Costello in 2012-13. He went home with five GLVC Championship gold medals at the 2016 league meet, including his 50-yard freestyle (20.04) swim that was a league record, and his 1:36.54 in the 200 free that was both a GLVC and pool record at Crawfordsville Aquatic Center three months ago. His other first-place finishes came in the 100 free (44.19), 400 free relay (2:57.98) and 800 free relay (6:33.06). Sponsler and his 200 free relay team also set a pool and GLVC record in the 200 free relay preliminaries (1:19.92) before posting a runner-up finish in the finals (1:20.76). Additionally, he and the Miners 400 medley relay quadruplet took second at 3:15.34. During this year’s NCAA Division II Championship, the team captain placed seventh in the 200 free for All-America honors while also earning the same distinction in the 100 free and as part of all three freestyle relays. This was the fourth year in a row that Sponsler was named an All-American, earning four nods as a freshman, three in his second year and five during his junior campaign. He was additionally a three-time All-GLVC honoree and was named the 2015 GLVC Swimmer of the Year. The Lincoln, Neb., native penned the final chapters of his storied career at Missouri S&T with two individual (50 & 200 free) and two relay (400 & 800 free relay) Conference records while adding school records in the 50, 100 & 200 free, all three freestyle relays as well as the 400 medley relay.
As a team, S&T finished 14th at the NCAA DII meet in Sponsler’s freshman season, 11th when he was a sophomore, 16th during his junior campaign and 13th this past season. At the GLVC meet, the Miners were third in 2013-14 and finished runners-up in both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons.
In the classroom, Sponsler boasts a 3.92 cumulative grade point average (GPA) while studying Nuclear Engineering, having just graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science degree. He was named to the Capital One Academic All-America First Team in 2013-14 and 2014-15, while the 2015-16 team has not yet been selected. He was named to the CSCAA’s Scholar All-America team in each of the last two years and awaits a potential third nod this summer when the 2015-16 team will be announced. Finally, he has been a CoSIDA Academic All-District team member for three consecutive years and awaits selections for the Academic All-America teams to be released early June. He was selected as the GLVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year in men’s swimming for the 2014-15 season and has been a member of the Dean’s List, Kappa Mu Epsilon (Mathematics Honor Society) and S&T’s Honors Academy. Furthermore, he was the recipient of the American Nuclear Society sophomore undergraduate scholarship and Nuclear Engineering departmental scholarship. Most recently, he was the winner of the Gale Bullman Award, which goes to the school's top senior student-athlete (one male and one female), while he also received the College of Engineering Graduate Merit Scholarship and will begin post-graduate work at Texas A&M University this fall.
Out of the pool and classroom, Sponsler served as an undergraduate fellow for Toshiba Westinghouse in the summer of 2015 in State College, Pa., where his tasks included robotic inspection of dry cask storage, design and construction of mock-ups for dry cask storage systems, multidisciplinary projects in nuclear, electrical and mechanical engineering and collaborative projects between industry, university and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He completed undergraduate research at Missouri S&T in the summer of 2014, dealing with characterization of gamma cameras and developing camera controls and automatic quality checks. Moreover, the senior has served as Vice President of the S&T chapter of the American Nuclear Society and has been the head of the service committee, which handled projects that included Adopt-A-Highway and local food distributions. He also organized and secured funding for a public showing of the nuclear energy documentary, Pandora’s Promise and was a member of the M-Club – S&T’s student-athlete service organization.
Kostal becomes just the second Rockhurst female student-athlete to be honored with the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award. It also happens that she gives Rockhurst back-to-back honors and is the third Hawk ever selected, joining Taylor Skala – last year’s recipient – and the school’s only male winner, Garrett Fischer, who was chosen in 2007-08.
The coveted honor comes at the conclusion of the talented senior’s career on the volleyball court after she earned numerous honors both athletically and academically during her four years as a Hawk. She began her career making an immediate impact and was rewarded with All-GLVC West Division honors, AVCA All-Region first-team recognition, and a GLVC Defensive Player of the Week award as a freshman. She didn’t slow down her second year, garnering First Team All-GLVC laurels and AVCA All-Region honorable mention. Moving into her junior campaign, Kostal was a Second Team All-GLVC selection, a Daktronics All-Region second teamer, and a member of the Mizuno Midwest Region Volleyball Crossover All-Tournament team. Most impressive is how she closed out her career, gleaning All-GLVC first-team distinction, AVCA All-Region first team honors, a D2CCA All-Region first team nod and was named an AVCA All-America honorable mention. Those individual merits helped the Hawks succeed in her four seasons, earning a berth to the GLVC Championship Tournament every year she played that included a tournament title in 2012. Rockhurst also garnered bids to the NCAA Tournament three of the last four years, advancing all the way to the quarterfinals this past season. During Kostal’s tenure, the Hawks went 116-23 overall and 63-9 in the GLVC, including a perfect 18-0 league mark in 2016 to include a No. 5 ranking in the final AVCA DII Top 25 Coaches’ Poll.
Kostal’s individual postseason honors were due to impressive statistics, including two years leading the league in assists with 11.44 per game in 2015 and 11.26 in 2016. She was also nationally ranked No. 7 this past fall for her mark and was as high as fourth two seasons ago among DII players.
The product of Papillion, Neb., also ranked high in her studies, owning a 3.94 cumulative GPA as an Exercise Science major to complete her requirements as a Bachelor of Science in Health and Human Services graduate. She was named to the Dean’s List every semester and the 2014-15 CoSIDA Academic All-District team. Kostal earned CoSIDA Capitol One Second Team Academic All-America honors in 2015, was three times an Academic All-GLVC winner and twice (2013 & 2015) was named the GLVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year in volleyball.
Off the court and into the community, Kostal spent her time volunteering with a plethora of organizations. She worked with the Kansas City Humane Society, went on a missions trip to Nicaragua to perform service tasks, helped with the YMCA Challenger League aiding special needs participants in various sports, and spent time with the Boy’s Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska. She was part of the CLC organization on campus her first three years at Rockhurst, participated as a team representative on the campus Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) all four years, was inducted into the Chi Alpha Sigma honor society and served as President her junior year. Additionally, Kostal served as the Social Chair for the Exercise and Sports Science Club and still found time to create an entirely new club on campus. The PURPOSE club is a combined Exercise and Sport Science and Pre-PT/OT club where she helped write the constitution and held the first meetings this past year.