An NCAA committee that oversees the Walter Byers Graduate Scholarship selected two former student-athletes — Texas graduate Logan Eggleston and Princeton graduate Dylan Kim — as recipients of the 2023 awards.
Eggleston earned her bachelor's degree in business management in 2022 while competing in volleyball, and Kim earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 2021 while competing in fencing.
Eggleston, who led Texas to the 2022 Division I Women's Volleyball Championship, is working on a master's degree in sports management at her alma mater. Kim is enrolled in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia.
Established in 1988, the Walter Byers Scholarship program each year awards $24,000 scholarships to one male and one female recipient. The scholarships can be renewed for a second year. Recipients chosen by the Walter Byers Scholarship Committee are recognized as combining the best elements of mind and body to achieve national distinction for their achievements and to be future leaders in their chosen field.
Logan Eggleston
Logan Eggleston led Texas to the 2022 Division I Women's Volleyball Championship. (Photo courtesy of Texas)
During her stellar collegiate career, Eggleston was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Division I Women's Volleyball Championship while leading the Longhorns to the program's third NCAA title.
Volleyballmag.com named Eggleston the National Player of the Year in 2021 and 2022, and the American Volleyball Coaches Association tabbed her for the same honor last fall.
Eggleston, who was named one of eight recipients of the McLendon Minority Postgraduate Scholarship earlier this month, finished her career with 1,921 kills and a .305 hitting percentage.
Her accolades on the court include being named the Big 12 Conference Player of the Year the past three seasons and setting the conference and school records for career aces with 208.
In the classroom, Eggleston finished with a 3.60 grade-point average.
Off the court, the experiences of the summer of 2020, when attention to racial injustices in society came to the forefront nationally, had an influence on Eggleston.
As she and other Texas student-athletes discussed the injustices, they looked at their campus surroundings. The student-athletes collaborated to create a list of changes they wanted to see.
"I learned about being a leader across a diverse group of people and how to work passionately to accomplish goals," Eggleston wrote in her Byers Scholarship essay. "I got the opportunity to work closely with our athletic and university administration to help make these changes happen and see firsthand how leaders work under pressure. I saw that more diversity is needed in leadership roles, which in turn heightened my interest in higher education leadership and (will help) me realize my career goal of becoming an athletics director."
Eggleston, a three-year captain of the Texas women's volleyball team and president of the campus Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, thinks earning a degree in sports management will increase her understanding of the business side of collegiate athletics.
Dylan Kim
Dylan Kim was named all-Ivy League in epee in 2019-20. (Photo courtesy of Princeton)
During the 2019-20 season, Kim was named all-Ivy League in epee. He went 11-4 in the round robins en route to winning the individual league championship.
Kim competed in NCAA regional competition twice during his career, finishing 13th in the 2018-19 season.
In the classroom, Kim posted a 3.89 grade-point average while minoring in global health and health policy and applications of computing.
While Kim enjoyed competing in fencing, his most meaningful experiences at Princeton involved bringing people from different backgrounds together.
Given the powerful intersection between athletics and social justice in history, in the summer of 2020, Kim and his teammates created an initiative that focused on building diversity, equity and inclusion in the fencing community, which he says has been susceptible to discrimination and barriers of access.
Open discussions on the team led to better understanding of biases and discrimination. The team also invited in guests who advocated for students of color.
"Fencing also provided an avenue to help others on an individual scale through personal connection," Kim wrote in his Byers Scholarship essay. "Several of my teammates battled mental health issues because of outdated norms in athletics that discouraged vulnerability and the seeking of support. I aimed to eliminate such harmful expectations and joined a cohort of Student-Athlete Wellness Leaders, representatives who were trained to deconstruct these standards and ensure the well-being of their teams."
His experiences helped lead him to medical school, where he can help people in a health care role and strive for social equality.
During his first year of medical school, his research employed machine learning to identify different subgroups of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and predict unique risks and treatments that otherwise could have been overlooked by the current system.
Kim, president of Columbia's Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association, said his long-term goal will be to advocate for patients with both impactful medical research and the formation of close patient-centered relationships that welcome, rather than stigmatize, the differences in people.
