LAWRENCE -- Compared with guarding Nick Collison every day in practice, graduating with a 4.0 grade-point average was a piece of cake for Brett Olson.
Olson, a senior from Chanute and a walk-on for the men's basketball team, will graduate May 18 from the University of Kansas with a Final Four ring and a perfect GPA.
To Olson, a self-described perfectionist, getting a 93 on a test instead of a 100 was almost as frustrating as trying to stop KU's All-American forward. Almost.
"Nick would just kill me; he made me feel bad about myself," Olson said with a laugh.
Besides facing Collison, not much stood in Olson's way during his four years at KU. Along with excelling in the classroom and the endless stream of practices, road trips and games, he also held down a full-time internship in the Applied Physiology Lab, which focuses on the physiological processes involved in exercise, heart failure and aging.
Michael Godard, assistant professor of health, sport and exercise sciences and director of the lab, said he was wary at first of having to rely on a student-athlete with an extremely busy schedule.
"We don't normally see student-athletes take the little amount of free time they have and devote it to working in a research laboratory," he said.
Godard knew that the team often returned from road trips at 2 or 3 in the morning. He wasn't sure Olson would be able to juggle basketball and school and still meet his commitments to the lab. Olson, however, quickly put those fears to rest.
"Early on, when they got back from a road game, I figured I probably wouldn't see Brett until midmorning because he'd want to get some sleep," Godard said. "But he always would be at the lab when I showed up at 8 in the morning."
That dedication, along with a genuine interest in the research, soon made Godard realize that Olson was not just a typical student -- something the entire HSES department recently recognized by awarding Olson the Jack Wolf Award. The award is given to the outstanding senior male undergraduate student in the HSES department.
In fact, Godard said, he entrusts Olson with a lot of the duties regularly assigned to graduate students.
"He has a good sense of humor, yet he takes things seriously," Godard said. "He's a good person, fun to be around, and that's probably why they really liked him on the basketball team, too -- people want to be around him."
Olson said there weren't too many times during the season when he felt overwhelmed by all the demands of being a student-athlete and having a full-time internship. There was, however, that time the team lost two games at the preseason NIT Tournament.
"We lost two games, and on top of that I had to write a 10-page paper for my energy balance class in the hotel in New York over Thanksgiving," he said. "That was not a fun trip, and doing that paper made it even worse."
It was, no doubt, a tumultuous season, from the early losses all the way to the championship game, but it was an experience Olson will always cherish, and he's already looking forward to next season.
"I can't wait to get going again," he said. "We have a good shot next year. We have some new guys coming in that are good and our returning players have a lot of experience."
Olson will be back on the team next season. He has one final year of eligibility, which he will use as he continues with graduate school, working in the lab as a graduate research assistant.
Beyond that, Olson hopes eventually to attend medical school. He studied for the medical school entrance exam on the bus during some of the team's long road trips.
For Olson academics and athletics are never at odds. Instead, the discipline and persistence he learned from basketball helped prepare him for the rigors of college.
"I worked hard at basketball from such a young age that it just carried over to school," he said.
University Relations, May 5, 2003