Sara Tarbert and the true meaning of amateur athletics

Perhaps you don’t follow NCAA Division III women’s basketball. It is not very likely you do, it’s definitely one of those things that you either had to play somewhere and just stuck with it or you have to know somebody who plays to check out what is going on; unless you’re a student of course, and even then. So in case you don’t follow it, here is the fill in: Stevenson has built a powerhouse.

Last year the Mustangs women’s basketball team went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament after running away with the MAC Commonwealth championship and finishing the season with a 24-4 overall record. This year they won the ECAC South Championship — think of it like a more regionally based NIT.

Stevenson has a mega-star on their roster, junior Sara Tarbert. She was named the MACC Player of the Year in a landslide after averaging 21.9 points, 11.5 rebounds, 2.4 steals, 2.1 assists and 1.3 blocks per game while shooting 55.7-percent from the floor and 41.1-percent from beyond the arc.

There is no question that Tarbert is really way too good to be playing Division III basketball, but she has a great reason she is there. Tarbert started her college career at UMBC, which is Division I. She was named 2014 America East Rookie of the Year. Had she stayed at UMBC, she would probably be a first team All-Conference Player at this point. She honestly could probably be a significant role player at a Division I powerhouse like Maryland off the bench.

But for her, basketball is not all about glory. It’s fun for her. She left her scholarship at UMBC to go to Stevenson because it better fit her life goals. Tarbert wants to be a nurse. UMBC does not have a nursing program, but Stevenson has a great one. Becoming a nurse and helping people after she graduates is more important to her than continuing to garner different basketball awards and getting recognition as a Division I star. She just loves basketball and wants to keep playing as long as she possibly came before officially starts on that road we call life.

And that is what college athletics is supposed to be about; a love of the game while growing as a person before embarking on a path for success after athletics. And in the mean time, Stevenson is reaping the benefits and is putting them in a spotlight to show all their program has to offer.

Tarbert might be the hands down best player on the course each and ever time she steps out on the floor, but the Mustangs have a lot of other talent and a tremendous coach in Jackie Boswell, who previously coaches at Seton Keough High School in Baltimore, where she went 235-82 from 2000 to 2011. But hey, she has no problem building around Tarbert for another year as the Mustangs seek to get back to the NCAA Tournament next season.