INDIANAPOLIS – Drury University senior swimmer Andrea Bazzoli and University of Indianapolis senior women’s golfer Annika Haynes have each earned the Great Lakes Valley Conference 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.
Bazzoli and Haynes will be recognized Tuesday, May 22, at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Awards Banquet at the Drury Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri.
Bazzoli is the second Drury swimmer and third Panther in five years while the fourth overall school student-athlete to be recognized as the Conference’s top male student-athlete. Cross country runner Jaime Villa Zapatero was the school’s first to be honored in 2010-11, while baseball player Nick Thimesch earned the 2013-14 award, and fellow swimmer Sean Feher won in 2014-15. In the pool, Bazzoli holds two meet records from this year’s GLVC Championship, including his 53.65 in the 100 Breaststroke and as part of the 200 Medley Relay (1:28.14) team. He also broke a school record in the 100 Breast (53.58) as a sophomore, and recorded the Drury Breech Pool record in the 200 Free Relay (1:20.27) team his first season. During his freshman year in 2015-16, Bazzoli placed second as part of the 200 MR team at the GLVC Championships, helping the Panthers to their third league title in a row, and was fifth at the NCAA National meet in the 200 Individual Medley en route to a team sixth-place finish. The following year, he helped the squad win the Conference meet again with a national runner-up finish at the NCAA event. Also during his sophomore campaign, his 200 MR team won the GLVC title, while he was second in the 100 Breast, third in both the 200 Breast and 400 IM, and ninth in the 200 IM. At the national meet that year, he was on the sixth-place 400 MR and finished seventh in the 100 Breast (53.99). This season, the Peschiera Del Garda, Italy, native repeated as GLVC champion on the record-setting 200 MR team, won the 100 Breast in record time, and finished first in the 200 Breast on the way to a second-place finish at the league meet. At the NCAA meet, he became a National Champion in the 100 Breast, leading to Drury’s sixth-place team finish.
Bazzoli also exceled in the classroom, having graduated just this past weekend after maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade point average as a double major in Psychology and Sociology, recently being named the NCAA Elite 90 Award Winner in March, presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA championships. He is a three-time GLVC All-Academic award winner, bestowed upon student-athletes who meet a cumulative GPA of 3.30 over two semesters of an academic year, and a two-time GLVC Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar, presented to student-athletes who achieve a 4.0 GPA during the year. Moreover, he has been named to the Drury Dean’s List every semester and is a three-time College Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) Scholar All-American, given to those with a 3.5 GPA who also swam at the national championships. In addition, Bazzoli garnered the Dr. Edsel Matthews Award that is given to the most outstanding male and female senior student-athletes on campus, and he was named the Behavioral Sciences Student of the Year.
The senior is also a member of multiple honor societies on campus, including Mortar Board as the Membership Chairman, Psi Chi (the international honor society in psychology) as the President Pro Tempore, and Phi Kappa Phi (oldest and most selective national all-disciplines honor society). Furthermore, he has been a student teacher and teacher’s assistant for multiple courses, is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council as a representative for the department of Behavioral Sciences, and a member of the Behavioral Sciences Club, while also an Orientation Leader. In the community, Bazzoli has presented to the Boys and Girls Club of Springfield and the Midtown Carnegie Branch Library on my country of birth for the children, and he also was twice part of the DU Orientation Service Plunge.
Haynes becomes the fourth Indianapolis female student-athlete to be honored with the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award and the second golfer since the award’s inception in 1990-91. Basketball student-athlete Elizabeth Ramsey won the honor for UIndy first in 2000-01 and was followed by volleyball standout Kyleigh Turner in 2009-10 before the first golfer, Jenny Konop, was recognized in 2013-14.
The coveted distinction comes at the conclusion of the talented senior’s career on the golf course where she earned multiple team and individual accolades despite sustaining a season-ending injury in the fall of her sophomore campaign. Since 2014-15, she has been an integral part of the unprecedented success seen by the UIndy women’s golf team, which has won both the GLVC and NCAA East Regional titles all four years of her tenure, while winning the NCAA National Championship her freshman season. That same year, she was named the GLVC Freshman of the Year and earned All-GLVC honors after also winning a GLVC Player of the Month award for April. In addition, she was a Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) All-East Region honoree. All those postseason honors came thanks to a 77.2 stroke average, a third-place individual finish at the GLVC event, a runner-up result in the regional, and a 16th-place performance at the national tournament. Before her injury in 2015, she averaged a 75.3, placed in the top three in four of the five tournaments in which she competed, and won the UIndy Invitational. Though she did not participate on the team in the spring, the Greyhounds garnered the NCAA runner-up trophy that year. Haynes came back for the 2016-17 slate, averaging 75.8, tying for fifth at the Conference event, tying for 14th at the NCAA regional, and placing fourth at the national Championship to help the squad to a third-place finish. That year, she again earned All-GLVC laurels, another WGCA All-East Region recognition, and was named to the WGCA All-America Honorable Mention team. The Hounds are currently competing at the NCAA Championships this week, but, so far this season, the Haynes has recorded her best stroke average in four years at 74.3, while she finished in the top five three times and the top 10 seven times, including a fifth-place effort at the GLVC postseason event and a fifth-place tie a week ago in the regional meet. She was named GLVC Player of the Week earlier this season on Oct. 26 and All-GLVC for the third time in her career.
Just two days ago on Tuesday night, the product of Oakville, Ontario, was named the NCAA’s Elite 90 Award Winner, presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA championships. She has carried a 4.0 GPA through her entire career, studying Finance, which includes her studies in the MBA program, where she has completed 24 of the required 36 hours. Other academic honors during her time at UIndy include Dean’s List distinction every semester, the 2016 Joan V. Persell Award (outstanding non-senior student seeking a career in banking/finance), the 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-America® Third Team, and the 2017 Financial Institute Executives Award (top scholar non-senior in the Accounting/Finance). Haynes will be a four-time Academic All-GLVC and WGCA All-American Scholar and was inducted into both the Alpha Chi Honor Society (top 10% of the class) and Delta Mu Delta Business Honor Society. Furthermore, she was named the Top Undergraduate Scholar having the highest GPA in the School of Business. This year, she was the Dean James Conrad Economics and Finance Award winner with the top GPA in Finance among seniors and earned the I. Lynd Esch Scholarship Award. She also will win the GLVC Council of Presidents Academic Excellence Award at the end of this academic year along with her second GLVC Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar honor.
The two-time team captain also spent time serving her school and community as a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), as well as volunteering at Riley Children’s Hospital, at a Special Olympics golf tournament in 2017, and at the 2018 Tim Tebow Foundation Night to Shine, a prom for those with special needs.