ORLANDO, Fla. (SMU) – SMU women's soccer player Jewel Boland was named to the National Academic Momentum Award Second Team, Scholar Baller and the Institute for Sport and Social Justice announced Tuesday. Boland is one of 68 student-athletes recognized across the country, and categorized into three teams based on each student-athlete's academic improvement and the impact each student-athlete's academic performance had on his or her classmates, teammates, academic advisors, and professors.

Boland transferred to SMU from a junior college in her sophomore year. As she adjusted to the rigors of SMU and was finding ways to connect with the SMU community, she ultimately settled on Sport Performance Leadership as her major. She was drawn to the prospect of interacting with and mentoring athletes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit in Spring, and social injustices were highlighted, Jewel stepped up to make a difference. She is now a part of the leadership council on her team and Athletes Advocating for a Change. Despite these unprecedented times, she became advocate for social justice in her team, campus, and Dallas community.  She took her Sport Performance Leadership classroom lessons, and applied them to her life.

Established in 1995, the Scholar Baller® movement evolved in response to concerns that the student-athlete's athletics role increasingly superseded the student role. Well before the Name Image and Likeness (NIL) movement, Scholar-Baller in 2004 made history as the first organization to brand educational logos (ThinkMan® and ThinkWoman®) on NCAA and NAIA student-athlete jerseys, helmets, and uniforms during athletic competition.

In order to address this issue, the founding members of Scholar Baller® developed a groundbreaking program to bridge the gap between education and sport utilizing student-athletes' passion for entertainment and athletics. As a result, the Scholar Baller® program continues to produce unprecedented outcomes in student retention, academic achievement, and career development. This is in part due to the organization's culturally relevant representation(s) of student-athlete academic performance outcomes through imagery and language. Other schools and conferences have imitated the Scholar Baller educational and "graduation stamp" of success on the jerseys and helmets.