Business School student-athletes taking game to the next level

Ty Harden won’t be hustling off to job interviews this spring.

The Husky soccer star’s senior marketing studies at the Business School were interrupted when he was selected 23rd in Major League Soccer’s Super Draft by the Los Angeles Galaxy. This spring, the third-team All-American, four-time All-Pac-10 and three-time Pac-10 All-Academic honoree will vie for a spot on the pitch alongside domestic soccer luminary Landon Donovan and intergalactic überstar David Beckham.

He’s not alone. Several exceptional current and recent Business School student-athletes are taking their game to the next level since – and in some cases during – their undergraduate studies.

Golfer Paige Mackenzie (BA 2006) earned one of 15 exempt spots on the LPGA Tour by navigating the tour’s rigorous “Q School" on the first try. The Golfweek and NGCA All-American closed out her Husky career last spring by winning the Pac-10 championship and the NCAA West Regional, as well as a spot on the NGCA All-Scholar team and the Pac-10 All-Academic Team. Since graduation, Mackenzie has led the United States to a Curtis Cup victory and qualified for several LPGA tourneys.

James Lepp (BA 2006), the 2005 NCAA golf champion, just missed a full-time PGA Tour spot in the qualifying tourney, but has made several professional appearances in events on the PGA, Canadian and Nationwide Tours. The two-time top Canadian amateur was also the PGNA Men’s Athlete of the Year, a two-time PING All-American, All-Pac-10 performer and Pac-10 All-Academic first-team honoree.

Cameo Hicks, a senior studying marketing who led the UW women’s basketball team to the NCAA tourney the past two years, hopes to play in the WNBA or an overseas professional league after graduation. The two-time All-Pac-10 selection has led the Huskies in scoring and nearly every other statistical category for the past two years, and also received a Pac-10 All-Academic honorable mention and a nomination for the 2007 Lowes CLASS Award, the nation’s premier tribute to college seniors.

You can’t go pro in rowing, but you can go to Oxford. And the Olympic Games. Ante Kusurin (BA 2006), a three-year force in the Husky crew team’s powerful men’s varsity eight, has begun graduate studies at Oxford University while competing for the national team of his native Croatia and for the “Dark Blues" in this year’s edition of the historic Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

You can go pro in volleyball, but Courtney Thompson has higher aspirations. The most decorated woman in UW athletics history, Thompson has spent the winter quarter training with the US Women’s National Volleyball Team in Colorado Springs. She could not have accomplished much more in her collegiate career. The star setter of the three-time NCAA semifinalists and 2005 NCAA champions, Thompson earned a case full of All-America honors as well as the Honda Award for volleyball (the top distinction in the game), set a Pac-10 record with 6,552 career assists (third in NCAA history), and set the NCAA record for assists per game. The Business School senior is also a two-time Academic All-American, and says that she intends to graduate in June no matter what the national team requires of her.