Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 5 | May 2019

20 Inside Hokie Sports T o gain an understanding of the caliber of student-athlete who wins the Skelton Award, just consider the credentials of this year’s winners: • One of them studies clinical neuroscience, and last summer—after a mission trip to India—participated in a research project that studied addiction; and • The other winner pursues a degree in mechanical engineering, with plans to focus on green engineering. In other words, Hannah Wilding and Ryan Okuda are preparing to do some life-altering stuff—all while playing a Division I sport. Wilding and Okuda won the 2019 Skelton Award for Academic Excellence in Athletics at the Athletics Director Honors Celebration The Athletics Director Honors Celebration recognized 515 student-athletes and 100 athletics support students for their work in the classroom in 2018 by Jimmy Robertson held at The Inn at Virginia Tech in March. Their academic successes, along with their successes in athletics and in the community, led to both receiving the award—the highest designation handed out by the Virginia Tech Athletics Department. The Skelton Award is named after Dr. Bill and Peggy Skelton. The late Dr. Skelton served in the Corps of Cadets and graduated from Virginia Tech in 1940. He later worked as a dean of the Virginia Cooperative Extension division at Tech. The late Peggy Skelton was a faculty member and director of the Cooperative Extension Family Resource Program in the College of Home Economics at Virginia Tech. Both were charter members of the Ut Prosim Society and its President’s Circle and combined for more than 100 years of support to the university in various capacities. The award goes each year to a rising junior, senior or fifth-year male and female student-athlete who has participated in intercollegiate athletics for at least two seasons at Tech and who holds an overall grade-point average of 3.40 or better. Each recipient receives a scholarship of $5,000. “Winning the Skelton Award for Academic Excellence in Athletics was an enormous honor,” Wilding said. “I am grateful to have my hard work recognized in this manner, and I am so thankful that the committee choosing the winners viewed my efforts as worthy. Even more, the award is made possible by the Skeltons, a family known for living out our university motto of Ut Prosim [“That I May Serve”]. So I am so honored to continue to uphold the values that a recipient of this award is meant to embody. To be known for serving others, as well as persevering in my academics and my sport, is a humbling recognition.” “I am incredibly honored to have been chosen to win the Skelton Award,” Okuda echoed. “I know that there are so many other athletes who put in the time and hard work that it takes to be successful in their sports as well as academics.”