Madison Glennie of Drake (women’s golf); Bryn Handley of Southern Illinois (women’s swimming); Lily Johnson of Missouri State (women’s volleyball) and Jaime Murtagh of Indiana State (men’s track and field) have been named 2018 Missouri Valley Conference postgraduate scholarship winners as announced by Commissioner Doug Elgin. The Missouri Valley Conference Faculty Athletics Representatives Committee voted to award postgraduate scholarships to the four student-athletes, due to their exemplary academic and athletic performances. Each will receive a $5,000 postgraduate scholarship from the Conference.
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This spring, Glennie earned first-team honors for the third time in her outstanding career. She has maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average as an English and law, politics, & society major. In the fall, Glennie was a 2017 Rhodes Scholar finalist. The senior from Clearwater, Fla., finished her stellar career with a 76.5 round average over 106 career rounds. Glennie plans to attend the Georgetown University Law School, where she will pursue a Graduate Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies. That will enable her to study human rights, with a specific focus on international trafficking of women and children and gender violence.
A native of Louisville, Ky., Handley earned a perfect 4.0 GPA at SIU and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Behavior Analysis and Therapy. A three-time MVC Elite 17 Award winner, she was named Academic All-American by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America in 2017. Handley was one of the program's top distance swimmers, earning All-MVC honors three times and winning the 5k CSCAA Open Water National Championship in 2017. She also placed eighth in the 1,650 meter freestyle at the USA Swimming Winter Nationals. Her remarkable career included winning MVC Swimmer of the Week honors a dozen times. She has accepted a position in the University of Kentucky Applied Behavior Analysis graduate program this fall and she plans to be a board-certified behavioral therapist in a K-12 school district, specializing in helping children with developmental and behavioral disorders.
Johnson earned AVCA All-American honors for the fourth consecutive season as a Third Team pick, and being named the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-America® of the Year. She concluded her career with a school-record 2,293 career kills, and is one of 10 players in NCAA history with at least 2,200 kills and 1,500 digs. The native of Wildwood, Mo., achieved a 3.96 grade point average in cell and molecular biology and finished her illustrious career ranked second in NCAA history in career attacks (6,610), third in consecutive sets played (519), and 19th in kills (2,293), all MSU and MVC records. Johnson was the recipient of MSU's Citizen Scholar Award, the most prestigious honor a student can receive at Missouri State. She recently completed her third year as the chair of the MVC's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and she has represented the MVC on the NCAA SAAC. She will be pursuing a graduate degree to become a physician's assistant, specializing in pediatric orthopedics.
Murtagh recently concluded his collegiate track & field career at the NCAA East Regional. This past year he swept the MVC high jump titles in the indoor and outdoor seasons, recording the seventh-best jump in school history of en route to a first place finish at the indoor meet. He also won the outdoor title and leaves ISU with the fourth-best outdoor jump in school history. During his career he recorded six top-4 finishes in the high jump at the conference championships. The Ireland native recorded a 3.62 cumulative grade point average at ISU as a psychology major with a minor in counseling, criminology and criminal justice. Murtagh was a 2018 MVC Presidential Scholarship Award recipient and also earned the ISU Psychology Department's Academic Excellence Award. He plans to attend the University of Mississippi where he will pursue a PhD in clinical psychology.
To be eligible for consideration, recipients must have achieved a cumulative grade-point average of at least 3.40, participated with distinction in a Missouri Valley Conference championship sport for at least two seasons at the nominating institution and must graduate from their institutions within 18 months following selection at the spring meetings of the Faculty Athletics Representative Committee.
Also, the recipients must be accepted for postgraduate studies at an institution of higher learning at the time of receipt of the scholarship. And, the recipients must have completed eligibility for participation in intercollegiate athletics in the academic year in which nominated.