Graduate student Jessica Brooks goes up for a contested lay-up this season. (Sam Powers | Managing Photo Editor)

In 2020 and 2021, many NCAA athletes’ seasons were disrupted, if not completely canceled, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the NCAA announced that all student-athletes would receive an extra year of eligibility. Five years later, the last class of student-athletes with this extra “COVID year” are graduating from their respective institutions, including many Division III schools like WashU.

The past five years have seen WashU win three national championships including two in the past year — in women’s indoor track and women’s soccer. Of WashU’s 17 varsity teams, over half have a fifth-year or graduate student-athlete. Some, like basketball player Jessica Brooks and soccer player Owen Culver chose to spend one last year at their alma mater while pursuing a graduate degree. Other athletes, like former WashU swimmer Bert Wang, use their fifth year of eligibility to transfer from another institution to WashU to pursue an advanced degree while playing the sport they love.

For athletes who have already received their undergraduate degrees from WashU, the decision to use their extra year of eligibility came down to their desire to have one more year playing the sport they love while continuing their education.

Despite the rule being announced in 2020, neither Brooks nor Culver made the decision to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity until their senior year.

During her senior season, Brooks joked that every game, team meal, and road trip would be her last. But following a loss in the NCAA Tournament, Brooks wanted more.

“Then we lost the first game and tournament last year, the first round, first game, and immediately after that game, I was like, ‘Oh, there’s no way. I’m just going to give up the extra year that I have, this is just too much fun,’” Brooks said. “I love these people too much. I love the sport way too much to just go work.” 

Brooks did not make this decision alone. After talking with her youth basketball coach, she and her coach recognized the unique opportunity that an extra year of college basketball provided. 

“I had a conversation with my old select club, [AAU] coach, and he was like, you have 40 years, 50 years to work, you only have one more year playing the sport that you’ve sacrificed so much for,” she said. “And I think that kind of just put it into perspective for me.”

Similarly, Culver chose to stay at WashU for an extra year to pursue a masters in biomedical engineering and spend an extra year with the team that he describes as his closest friends.

“[Soccer] was a massive part of my undergrad experience, and my roommates all throughout college — and even now — are friends I made from the team, and definitely, my closest friends throughout college, were a lot of guys on the team, so [soccer] had a big impact on my like college experience as a whole,” Culver said. 

Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Director of Athletics Anthony Azama credits the large number of athletes who have returned for a fifth year to the culture of WashU athletics.

“I think that speaks to the culture, and I think that is probably one of the more important things that we tr[ied] to prioritize during the pandemic,” Azama said. “We are in the ‘building face to face’ type of environment, because relationships are our currency.”

Culver and Brooks also found themselves in unique roles as they entered their fifth years on the team — both had new coaches. Former WashU men’s soccer head coach Joe Clarke retired after 27 years and was replaced by the former assistant coach of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Andrew Bordelon. Women’s basketball head coach Randi Henderson left WashU to become an assistant coach at her alma mater, the University of Iowa, and was replaced by former St. Louis University and Wisconsin head coach Lisa Stone.

Both athletes played roles in helping the coaches transition into their teams.

“It’s been super positive for a lot of our team,” Brooks said about Stone’s transition. “I’m super grateful that I got to play for coach Stone. She’s been doing this for so long, and has a lot of wisdom and insight to share with us, which I think off the basketball court, is also really valuable, just because it is another leader that I get to learn from and kind of pick her brain on different leadership things, career opportunities, that sort of thing, which has been really fun, but I think the transition was pretty seamless.”

Graduate student Owen Culver competes in a game during the second half of his final season at WashU. (Ella Giere | Photo Editor)

Playing on a varsity team as a graduate student creates unique challenges. While it offered unique ways to lead on the field or on the court, it also opened up new learning experiences for Brooks and Culver. For Brooks, who is pursuing an MBA in the Olin Business School, the change is primarily that classes are held later in the day. Culver, who is a master’s student, has to balance commitments in his lab on the medical campus and his commitments three miles away on Francis Field.

“[I learned] time management skills like communicating with [my] coach and my boss [when] I would have to have conversations I would prefer not to have,” Culver said about the adjustment. “Sometimes I couldn’t make a lab meeting, I couldn’t make a meeting with my team because of something, so I think learning how to have conversations like that was something I didn’t really expected to have, but is definitely an experience that I grew from.”

Azama similarly believes that having a fifth year of eligibility offers student-athletes experiences that will translate to both their everyday and professional lives.

“You’re going to fail in athletics, you’re going to fail in front of friends, parents, professors, and what you’re going to learn is how to respond to failure, which I think we do better than anybody on the campus,” Azama said.

Following this year, D-III will return to student-athletes having just four years of eligibility. And while this might seem like a return to pre-COVID normalcy, Azama believes that D-III athletics will see long-term changes and an increased parity among schools due to test-optional admissions and the transfer portal reducing potential barriers for student athletes to compete at the collegiate level.

“The one thing that I’ve heard from [the] coaches is nothing will be the same,” he said. “The landscape has just changed so much, avenues have opened up… I think Division III will probably not be what it was [back] then, and that might not be a bad thing.”

According to Azama, WashU’s focus has always been on finding talented athletes at the high school level, and developing their skills during their four years in St. Louis. However, he believes that these rule changes will allow WashU to create a “hybrid” model, adding graduate students to rosters when possible.

For Brooks, whose team is currently in their final stretch of conference play, this season will be her last. As she reflected upon her final year competing for the Bears, she hopes to enjoy every moment with her team and use her experience to inspire others to pursue their team’s dreams.

“I’ve been very emotional this season because it is my last year,” she said. “But I looked at all these little girls and I was like, I’m playing for them. I’m playing for little baby Jess who picked up a basketball and cried with my dad when he told me I couldn’t reach the rim or whatever it was … I talk to my older teammates, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, you know, I don’t miss a 6 a.m. lift but I miss, you know, a locker room chat with you guys, or ice bath bonding moment, whatever it is.’ So just, you know, thinking about all the little things that I’ve done that have led me up to this point, and trying to enjoy every moment.”