INDIANAPOLIS – Missouri S&T track and field senior Nathan Swadley and Lindenwood University women’s basketball graduate student Julia Ruzevich have each earned the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award as the league’s male and female athlete of the year, the Conference office announced Friday.
The awards are bestowed annually by the GLVC to one male and one female student-athlete who 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.
Swadley and Ruzevich will be formally recognized Tuesday, May 24, at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Awards Reception at the Drury Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri.
For the first time since Jordan Henry in 2008-09, a male track and field athlete from Missouri S&T has claimed the GLVC’s top student-athlete honor, while Swadley is the fifth overall male student-athlete to be selected from the school and second in the last three years. In his final season as a Miner, Swadley was named All-GLVC at the Indoor Track & Field Championships with a win in the shot put thanks to a career-best mark of 17.85 meters, which also set a new league standard by 0.04 meters. Shortly thereafter, he set an even better career heave at 18.01 meters to earn All-America honors with a sixth-place finish at the NCAA Championships in March. In 2021, the Willard, Mo., native won all three GLVC Outdoor throwing events before placing 11th in the shot put at the NCAA Outdoor Championships to earn All-America honorable mention.
Swadley has had a decorated career since arriving in Rolla back in 2019, winning GLVC Field Athlete of the Week honors on five occasions in that time and winning a total of 18 shot put competitions, six discus throw events, and one each in the weight and hammer throws. His name also tops the school record books in both shot put and discus throw, holding the standard for both indoor and outdoor seasons. After being named Second Team All-GLVC in both his freshman and sophomore years in outdoor and indoor shot put, respectively, Swadley emerged his junior year to not only earn First Team All-Conference in all three throwing events at the GLVC Outdoor Championships, but he was also named the GLVC Field Athlete of the Year for his strong performance. That was followed up with four more All-GLVC selections this year with one at Indoor (first in shot put) and three at Outdoor (second in shot put; third in discus; third in hammer throw). Additionally, the thrower qualified for the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Championships in the shot put just this week.
Academically, Swadley excelled in the classroom where he carried a 3.95 GPA in Mechanical Engineering while minoring in Electrical Engineering, making the Dean’s List all seven semesters through last fall. A two-time CoSIDA Academic All-District selection and Academic All-American in 2020-21, he has done research for his undergraduate degree in laser-aided metal additive manufacturing, and his senior design project was over a mathematical modeling device that is designed to keep certain foods and drugs from degrading in warm temperatures. A three-time Academic All-GLVC honoree, two-time GLVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and two-time GLVC Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar, Swadley was part of a group of S&T students who participated in Undergraduate Research Day at the Missouri State Capitol and conducted a presentation over miniature fatigue testing controller parameter estimation based on frequency response and material properties.
Ruzevich is the first student-athlete – male or female – from Lindenwood to win the GLVC’s most prestigious honor. The 2022 GLVC Player of the Year earned a plethora of awards after averaging a double-double of 20 points and 11.4 rebounds during her senior season. She picked up an All-GLVC First Team nod and was an All-Region and All-America selection by both the WBCA and D2CCA in her final year on campus after being a three-year starter for the Lions. She was also a first-team honoree after the 2020-21 campaign and earned five GLVC Player of the Week honors during her three years on campus.
Despite only being with Lindenwood for three seasons, Ruzevich will go down as one of the best to come through the program. She surpassed 1,000 career points this season, while scoring 20 or more points in 14 games and registering 14 double-doubles. The 6-foot-1 guard scored a career-high 35 points and pulled down 20 rebounds in this year’s GLVC Tournament first round game against Rockhurst, while she grabbed 23 rebounds in a win over Southwest Baptist in January to give her the second-most rebounds ever by a Lindenwood player in a game.
The Orland Park, Ill. Native completed her Master’s in Business Administration, sporting a 3.82 GPA, and finished her undergraduate degree with a 3.95 GPA for Summa Cum Laude laurels while studying Mass Communication and minoring in Pre-Medicine. She was twice named Academic All-GLVC and is on track to win her third accolade of the sort. Moreover, Ruzevich was a 2020-21 GLVC Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar honoree for achieving a 4.0 GPA during the course of the academic year.
While having an impressive resume both on the court and in the classroom, Ruzevich’s activities in the community are just as impressive. She spent time volunteering in the medical field, whether she was volunteering with at-home care of geriatric patients, giving back to the kids in the Pediatric Unit at the Missouri Baptist Hospital, or making blankets for ICU patients at the Loyola Hospital. If she was not volunteering in hospitals, she would be giving back to athletics by working basketball camps, training Special Olympics athletes, helping with game operations for youth basketball contests, or serving as a mentor in the Lindenwood Athlete Mentor Program. Furthermore, she helped with the St. Louis Food Bank soup kitchen, assisted with two different 5K runs, and volunteered at a dog shelter.