Stauffer Awarded ECAC Honor

Former women's soccer co-captain Emily H. Stauffer '981-'99 was named one of three recipients of the Award of Valor given by the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) last week.

"I love the ECAC," said Stauffer, who is the current all-time record holder in assists on the women's soccer team and a four-time All-American. "It's a very meaningful award and I am certainly honored," she said.

The Award of Valor is given to ECAC athletes "whose courage, motivation and relentless determination serves as an inspiration to all," according to an ECAC press release.

Stauffer's off-the-field heroics helped earn her the award--she twice donated bone marrow for her brother Matt, a leukemia patient who passed away in January 1998. During 1997, she took a leave of absence, sitting out the soccer season to donate marrow for the second time.

The honor comes at the end of a college athletic career in which Stauffer has earned many other distinctions.

She was twice named Ivy League Player of the Year and was recognized as an Ivy League All-Star in her final season. In 1994, she was also named Ivy League Rookie of the Year.

This year, the NCAA gave Stauffer its highest honor, the "Today's Top VIII" award, naming her one of the nation's top undergraduate athletes in any sport or division, male or female.

Stauffer was also a two-time finalist for the Hermann Trophy, the Heisman Trophy of college soccer.

Her individual success has been accompanied by team successes as well, and Stauffer said her latest accolade reflects on her teammates' skill.

"Individual awards in a team sport are as much a reflection of the team as of the individual," she said.

Over the past four years, the team has qualified for four NCAA tournaments and won three Ivy League titles.

Stauffer said her interactions with her teammates had raised her level of play.

"It's impossible not be inspired," she said.

During the past season, the squad Stauffer co-captained earned its second-best record in the history of the 22-year old program.

Stauffer is currently training to teach elementary school with Teach for America, a program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in underprivileged rural and urban schools for two years.

She will receive the award at the 1999 ECAC Fall Convention Awards Banquet in October.