Heizelman receives Big 12 conference honor

The Community of Champions honors students for work outside athletics.

By Ben Kupiszewski

Published Feb. 26, 2010

The Big 12 honored a Missouri gymnast not named Sarah Shire earlier this month for more than her performance in the gym.

Shire has taken Big 12 Gymnast of the Week honors four times this season, but this time one of her teammates who was selected for recognition.

Sophomore Allie Heizelman is Missouri's selected student-athlete representative in the Big 12's 2010 Winter Chick-fil-A Community of Champions.

"I was a little bit surprised at first because I really didn't expect to win," Heizelman said. "But I was excited to receive the award. It is such a great honor."

Heizelman was not aware the Big 12 named her to its Community of Champions until assistant coach John Figueroa texted his congratulations to her. An e-mail from Missouri media relations confirmed Figueroa's text was accurate and clarified what Heizelman's accolade really was.

Heizelman is happy to continue the streak of gymnasts representing Missouri in the Big 12 Community of Champions. "My teammate Alicia Hatcher won it last year," Heizelman said. "It's awesome that she won it last year and I can win it this year, and I'm kind of following in her footsteps."

Twelve student-athletes comprise the Big 12 Chick-fil-A Community of Champions with each recipient representing his or her Big 12 institution.

Heizelman was only one of two non-seniors bestowed with the honor.

In order to be in contention for the award, the student-athletes must demonstrate superb performance in academics, community service, leadership and sportsmanship.

Coach Rob Drass said Heizelman is a prime example of such a student-athlete.

"I think she just has great character," Drass said. "She understands what's important in life and how to work hard. She always says, 'thank you,' always is a pleasure to be around, always picks a teammate up, always is the first person to volunteer for community service and she is a 4.0 student."

Heizelman is also a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, where she serves as a co-vice president of community service.

As for giving back to the Columbia community, Heizelman volunteers at a local food bank with her teammates. The team also visited a children's hospital last semester, and Heizelman said the community service would not end there.

This semester they are planning to assist disabled children with basic gymnastic maneuvers at the Hearnes Center.

Furthermore, Heizelman said the gymnastics team has the best GPA out of all the athletic teams at MU. She said Drass wants him gymnasts to be balanced people by ensuring academics and being a good person are not lost among all the time the team spends in the gym.

"School is first and then you're an athlete," freshman Lauren Swankoski said. "However, you have to bring the same aspects you include in school as you do in gym, and also outside with community service."

Drass said nurturing his athletes into mature young adults is vital to build a successful program.

"That's the most important part of my job here is to continue the work that mom and dad have done for the last 17, 18 years," Drass said. "My job is to finish that off."

In order to accomplish this, Drass becomes involved in the athletes' lives on a daily basis, actively seeking to hear about everything from academics to boyfriend issues.

"You're definitely a surrogate parent," Drass said. "There's not a day that doesn't go by that I probably don't have some type of conversation with almost every one of them about one of those things outside of the gym."