Business students honored as Scholar-Athletes of the Year

Brandon Schmidt, left, and Jackie Wegner received Tulane’s 2015 Scholar-Athlete of the Year Awards.

Two Freeman School students were named Tulane University’s 2015 Scholar-Athletes of the Year. Jackie Wegner, a junior finance major from Clearwater, Florida, received the female Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award and Brandon Schmidt, a senior finance major from Lafayette, Louisiana, was named male Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

The university bestows the awards each year to honor the male and female student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average after a minimum of five semesters. The awards were presented in April at Tulane’s annual All-Sports Athletics Banquet in the Lavin-Bernick Center.

Wegner, a member of the sand volleyball team, has a GPA of 3.987 and has been a member of the Tulane Scholar Athlete Program since 2012. This season, Wegner and teammate Tea Juric posted a 27-6 record and became the first sand volleyball team in Tulane history to qualify for back-to-back trips to the national championships. Schmidt, a linebacker on the football team, earned his second consecutive Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award with a perfect 4.0 GPA. He played in six games for the Green Wave in 2014, seeing action primarily on special teams and logging one tackle.

The ceremony also honored Tulane’s American Athletic Conference Scholar-Athletes of the Year. Schmidt earned the male Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award while swimming and diving’s Claire Schelske, a senior finance major from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, earned the female award. Schelske earned a 3.979 GPA while serving as president of the Tulane Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She participated in 10 meets in 2015, competing in the 100 free, the 100 breast, the 200 breast and the 500 free events as well as being part of three relay teams.

“Participating in intercollegiate athletics requires extraordinary dedication and hard work, but to achieve the level of academic success that these student-athletes have achieved is nothing short of remarkable,” said Freeman School Dean Ira Solomon. “They represent the best of student athletics, and I couldn’t be more proud to have them as students here at the Freeman School.”