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Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award
INDIANAPOLIS – Drury University senior baseball standout Nick Thimesch and University of Indianapolis senior golfer Jenny Konop 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 Wednesday.
The awards are bestowed annually by the GLVC to one male and one female athlete that display academic excellence, athletic ability and achievement, character and leadership. It is named in honor of the former GLVC Commissioner and coach and director of athletics at Saint Joseph's College.
Thimesch and Konop will be recognized Tuesday, May 20, at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Awards Banquet at the Drury Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Mo.
Thimesch is just the second Drury standout to ever be recognized as the conference’s top male student-athlete, joining Jaime Villa Zapatero following the 2010-11 season. Having just helped his Panthers to their second GLVC Championship last weekend and an automatic bid as the No. 3 seed to the NCAA Midwest Regional, Thimesch is in the midst of penning the final chapters of his storied career at Drury. A three-time All-Conference honoree and soon to be a four-time Academic All-Conference selection, Thimesch was also selected last week by the league coaches as the first Panther to ever be named GLVC Player of the Year. A starter in all 52 games this season, Thimesch leads the conference and is second nationally with a .463 batting average, some 0.62 percentage points ahead of the second-best hitter in the league. His efforts improved in conference play as he also led the league at the plate by hitting at a .484 clip in 34 GLVC contests. The outfielder has posted a conference-high 95 hits and 115 total bases on the season, ranks first with a .504 on-base percentage, scored the second-most runs (54), tied for second in runs batted in (49), and rates third overall in stolen bases (30), which is a single-season school record.
In addition, the Marshalltown, Iowa, native will graduate as the school’s all-time leader in hits (305 currently), batting (.375), stolen bases (74) and runs scored (193), and is likely to shatter the school’s single-season batting average record of .404, which was set in 2010 by Kendall Findley. A third-team ABCA All-American last year, Thimesch has returned in his final season to guide his Panthers (41-11) to a school-record 41 wins entering this week’s NCAA Midwest Regional.
In the classroom, Thimesch owns a 3.73 cumulative grade point average (GPA) in biology and chemistry with a minor in global studies. He has long be lauded for his commitment to academics as he was just one of 19 sophomores on campus to be recognized as a Judge Warren White Scholar in the fall of 2011, honoring those who boasted a perfect 4.0 GPA as a freshman. In each of the four seasons spent at Drury, Thimesch participated in Habitat for Humanity as well as the Pre-Health Professions Club, which included blood drives and volunteer work at the Ronald McDonald House. He also worked as a full-time student office assistant in Drury’s Admissions Office and spent the last two years forming and organizing the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter.
Konop, a native of Green Bay, Wis., is the third UIndy female student-athlete to be honored with the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award, joining Elizabeth Ramsey (2000-01) and Kyleigh Turner (2009-10) in the select company. The coveted honor comes at the peak of the talented senior’s career as the two-time defending GLVC Player of the Year recently helped the Greyhounds to both their third straight GLVC Championship and NCAA Division II Super Regional 1 titles. Just the third player in conference history to repeat as Player of the Year, Konop owns a 771-112 head-to-head record this season, averaging 77.4 in 27 rounds played. In her 13 outings this season, Konop has garnered three wins and finished in the top five on seven occasions, most recently a fifth-place tie at the GLVC Championships. A model of consistency throughout the year, Konop finished 10 of those 13 tournaments in 15th place or better.
Her leadership has helped UIndy to unmatched success on the links over the course of her career. She has competed in the team’s five-player lineup in 26 tournament wins, while the Hounds have placed first or second as a team in 32 of the last 40 tournaments to card a head-to-head record of 396-51-1 (.885).
The same level of success has been achieved in the classroom as Konop will soon conclude her career as a four-time Academic All-Conference honoree to go along with a number of other prestigious academic honors. A three-time All-American Scholar by the National Golf Coaches Association (NGCA), Konop was honored in 2012 with the NCAA’s Elite 89 Award, which recognized the women’s golfer with the highest cumulative GPA at the NCAA Division II Championships. Last year, she was named GLVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year for women’s golf and later garnered CoSIDA Academic All-America distinction. This season, Konop was honored multiple times on campus, including being named the recipient of the Richard E. Schrier Award, which goes to a student who has had great success in the classroom and on the field and who is considering a post-graduate degree at UIndy.
In addition, she was also the winner of UIndy’s “Angus Nicoson Something Extra Award,” which is given to the student-athlete who has achieved tremendous academic and athletic success while also volunteering and given extra to the university and the community. She is the first person in school history to win both awards from the school.
Konop holds a 3.95 cumulative GPA in biology/Pre-Med, yet has still found time to balance her schedule as a successful student-athlete, a two-time captain, and a leading representative of the school off the course. She has volunteered at a local elementary school, coordinated numerous team community service efforts for her squad, and is a weekly visitor at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis.