Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/109500
MAKING THE GRADE Studevent has twice won Academic AllConference recognition from the Big Ten. you use your story as a way to help kids out there in the community.��� ��� That story is chilling. The trouble began when she was in eighth grade at La Jolla Country Day School. She was an aspiring athlete, and although she wasn���t officially a member the girls��� basketball team yet, she would tag along on road trips because she knew the coaches and looked up to the players. But after returning from a trip to a tournament in Oakland, she found a note tucked in her travel bag addressed to ���Senorita.��� It was written anonymously, and it demanded answers. Why are you around us? Why are you working out with us? Why are you getting gear? Go back to Mexico, you taco bitch. Studevent, whose mother is Mexican and whose father is of mixed ethnicity, got another letter containing more ethnic slurs after the team played a tournament in Arizona. It wasn���t signed, and the return address on the envelope was the school���s address. But the stationary was from the hotel where the team had stayed, and the letter had an Arizona postmark. A third letter warned that two students were planning to plant marijuana in her backpack so that she would get caught in a drug sweep the school was conducting. It turned out to be an empty threat, but after finding profane notes taped to her locker and seeing her name turn up on pornographic material posted to websites, Studevent was frightened. ���I didn���t know what was going to happen next,��� she said. ���I didn���t know if they were going to poison my Gatorade. It was scary at that point.��� The bullying continued intermittently. Just when she thought it had finally stopped, it would start up again. Concerned about what might happen next, and dissatisfied with the school���s response, she and her parents decided it would be best for her to transfer from Country Day. For her junior year, she enrolled at the Bishop���s School, an independent college prep school in La Jolla, Calif. She shined as a guard on the girls��� basketball team, averaging 18.2 points and 4.1 rebounds her senior year and winning recognition as the California Division IV Player of the Year. Studevent���s play attracted the atten-