INDIANAPOLIS – After a conclusive vote from the league's faculty athletic representatives (FAR), Ursuline's Gabrielle Post was officially unveiled as the winner of the 2020-21 Great Midwest Athletic Conference Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year award on Monday afternoon.
 
The Great Midwest Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year is traditionally presented on an annual basis for an individual deemed to have completed the most outstanding record in athletics, scholarship and leadership.
 
Post, a native of Avon Lake, Ohio, is a senior dual sport student-athlete in cross country/track and field who completed her undergraduate studies with a perfect 4.0 GPA majoring in English. Post will stay at Ursuline to enroll in the 4+1 MAP Education program with the goal of teaching 7th through 12th grade English/Language Arts.
 
Post is looking to follow in the family footsteps, where both of her parents are also teachers. In 2020-21, she ran primarily in the 5K and 3K steeplechase during the outdoor season and most recently during the indoor campaign, competed in everything from the 3K, distance medley relay, 800-meter run and the mile.
 
Post has received Great Midwest Academic All-Conference Team honors in every year possible. She was voted as the team's MVP award winner in cross country and captured the Arrows Champion Award in 2019.
 
"Gabby has been a great leader in our program," said Ursuline head coach Alaric Best. "She jumped right in as a junior (transfer from Lorain County CC)) and did really, really well. From a team standpoint, she helped right away and has been phenomenal, someone the team can go to about anything."
 
Best has always done his best to put Post and her teammates in an environment to be successful in their athletic and academic endeavors.
 
"With cross country and then going into indoor and the outdoor season (for track and field), you have no time to take a break," Best said. "She's done a great job of balancing those challenges within our program."
 
In 2021, Post received a pair of prestigious scholarships, the first being The Achieve Credit Union Young-Adult Scholarship and the James R. Hunt Memorial Scholarship. By nature, Post is meticulous with her planning and time management, a pair of traits she attributes to her combined athletic and academic success.
 
Active within the Ursuline infrastructure itself, Post was the editor of Inscape, Ursuline's literary and fine-arts magazine and was a participant in the Rooted Bible Study on campus. She also worked the institution's phone-a-thon, wrote biographies for the Ursuline College Wall of Fame inductees and presented a welcome speech at freshman invocation last fall.
 
Post also volunteered at APSIRE high school writing workshops and the Metta Rose Dance Academy. She was additionally a writing tutor for Chegg.com and was chosen to present her senior thesis at the Johns Hopkins Macksey Undergraduate Research Symposium this spring.

Post is the fourth Arrow in Great Midwest history to receive Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year honors and the first since women's soccer standout Vanessa Consiglio in 2014-15. Additional Ursuline names on the prestigious list include Natalie Higgins in 2013-14 and Samantha Gauvin in 2012-13, the inaugural winner in the league's first year of inception. 
 
Additional finalists for 2020-21 Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year included Tiffin's Abbie-Jade Riley (women's tennis), Ohio Dominican's Angela Troyer (women's basketball), Ohio Valley's Bailey Garcia (softball), Hillsdale's Christina Sawyer (women's cross country/track and field), Walsh's Hannah McFeeters (women's lacrosse), Findlay's Jill Schmitmeyer (women's golf), Kentucky Wesleyan's Kaylee Clifford (women's basketball), Malone's Lauren Bennett (softball), Lake Erie's Luca Hartman (women's track and field), Cedarville's Rachel Sweeney (women's track and field) and Trevecca Nazarene's Sophie Vinson (women's golf).. Each member institution's FAR was permitted (1) male and (1) female nominee to put on the voting ballot for the most recently completed academic year.