Stanford's Alade named Pac-12 volleyball Scholar-Athlete of the Year

SAN FRANCISCO - STANFORD’s Tami Alade was named the 2018 Pac-12 Women’s Volleyball Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the Conference office announced on Thursday. The award, which is presented in each of the 24 sports the Pac-12 sponsors, was established to honor collegiate student-athletes that are standouts both academically and in their sports discipline.

Alade (Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada) is a human biology major at Stanford, boasting a 3.56 grade point average. She was named All-Pac-12 after helping the Cardinal to a 20-0 mark to claim a second-straight Pac-12 title and the No. 1-overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. She leads the nation with a 1.79 blocks average and ranks ninth in the country with a .404 hitting percentage, which also tops the Pac-12. She was named to the AVCA’s All-Pacific North team earlier this week. The middle blocker was an AVCA and VolleyballMag.com All-America Honorable Mention selection after helping the Cardinal to the national semifinal last season, also receiving honorable mention All-Pacific North Region and honorable mention All-Pac-12 nods. A 2016 NCAA Champion, Alade was a co-winner of Stanford Athletics’ Arthur F. Dauer Memorial Sports Performance Award, honoring the student-athlete who not only displays maximum effort on and off the field of competition, but also brings out the best in their teammates through positive attitude, relentless work ethic and consistent commitment to performance enhancement.

Off the court, Alade was an Academic All-Pac-12 honoree this season and an honorable mention in 2017. After volleyball, she intends to pursue a career in medicine working with children. She has worked with the Stanford Immersion in Medicine Series shadowing Dr. Ronald Cohen in the Neonatal ICU where she gained valuable clinical experience interacting with patients and their parents; engaging in diagnoses and adapting to a medical environment. Alade has also worked with Stanford’s Language and Cognition Lab, analyzing and presenting on the ways in which joint attention supports learning across different contexts and language modalities. She was awarded a grant to conduct a research study in the lab under a graduate student. In Stanford’s Language Learning Lab, Alade worked under Professor Anne Fernald as a research assistant doing experimental study on early language development. She acted directly in participant recruitment, running experiments with infants and children, and conducted data coding and analysis.

In order to be eligible for the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, student-athletes must be a senior (in athletics eligibility) on track to receive a degree, have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher, participate in at least 50% of the scheduled contests in the sport and have a minimum of one year in residence at the institution. Each Pac-12 institution may nominate one individual per sport, and the winners are selected by a committee of Pac-12 staff members at the conclusion of each sport’s regular season. The athletic accomplishments of the nominees are a consideration in the voting for the award.

A Scholar-Athlete of the Year will be named in each of the Pac-12’s 24 sponsored sports: baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, beach volleyball, men’s cross country, women’s cross country, football, men’s golf, women’s golf, women’s gymnastics, women’s lacrosse, men’s rowing, women’s rowing, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, softball, men’s swimming & diving, women’s swimming & diving, men’s tennis, women’s tennis, men’s track & field, women’s track & field, women’s volleyball, and wrestling.

The Cardinal are one of four Pac-12 volleyball teams still competing in the NCAA Tournament, hosting Washington, Washington State and Penn State in the regional semifinal on Friday, Dec. 7. The regional final is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 8.

Also Nominated: Carmen Unzue, ASU; Alexa Smith, COLO; Lindsey Vander Weide, ORE; Kayla Ellis, OSU; Kyra Rogers, UCLA; Victoria Garrick, USC; Destiny Julye, WASH; Claire Martin, WSU. 

Previous Volleyball Scholar-Athletes of the Year