Crown fan favorite Brady Griffith named CoSIDA Second Team Academic All-American
By Luke Herbert
Crown College senior Brady Griffith was recently named a second team academic all-American by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). The award is the culmination of four years of incredible athletic and academic success. Griffith is among the best and brightest that Crown College has to offer, a student-athlete who makes an impact in every area of the college.
The award comes as no surprise to anyone who has interacted with Brady during his time at Crown, because, you see, Brady Griffith is the Joe Mauer of Crown College. Minnesota Twins fans will understand what that means. No matter the situation, whatever Joe does, the crowd will still scream with the enthusiasm of 14 year old girls at an 80’s pop star mall tour. Brady elicits the same reaction from the student body at Crown College. Much like the rabid fans who obnoxiously yell, “Get in the hole” whenever Tiger Woods tees off, you can routinely here someone in the crowd yell “Shoot it, Brady” when the central defender takes a goal kick. Just one touch of the ball and any home crowd immediately transforms into a group of little league moms.
Why, you might ask? First, Brady Griffith is good. The senior has been a captain of the squad since his sophomore season and was named to a UMAC All-Conference team three times, a first team selection each of the past two years. A powerful presence in the middle of the Crown defense, Griffith has been the team’s rock and has allowed Coach Art Busha to be creative with his formations, lineups, and strategy. Griffith is phenomenal in the air, routinely winning contested headers and clearing danger almost effortlessly. A steady presence who has played between a rotating cast of defenders and in front of inexperienced goalkeepers, Griffith routinely diffuses dangerous situations with a calm, calculated style. Never flustered, the whole of Crown’s team is bolstered by their captain’s confident play.
Secondly, nobody can find a bad word to say about the Crown senior. Griffith is always friendly and polite. You couldn’t get him to boast or brag if you held him hostage and a non-humble word was his ransom. While most college students are complaining that their social calendar and schoolwork create too much to possibly get done, Brady fills almost every minute with productive activity. He has maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average while volunteering countless hours in the community and on campus. His major, by the way, is Biology…with a chemistry minor.
Griffith is an active member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS). To clarify, he’s a member of the National Leadership Council for the NSCS, a 10 member panel of students who serve as the member-leadership of an 800,000 student organization. The Crown College Chapter that Griffith belongs to… he started it. Griffith’s membership in the organization, and position on the National Leadership Council, is not just a great resume builder for med school applications, an empty title with no responsibility attached. Griffith currently serves as the organization’s deputy vice president, and last year organized Integrity Week, a national campaign that involved hundreds of campuses.
Griffith’s volunteer work even puts the traditional concept of college student’s volunteering to shame. Griffith didn’t just spend an afternoon raking leaves, or take a spring break trip that involved some manual labor. Since coming to Crown, Brady has volunteered over 200 hours in local hospitals. Long before the Special Olympics were the focus of a nationwide SAAC campaign, Griffith was a head coach for the organization. For six years in fact, he served as a head coach and was involved in the Chaska, Minn. delegation’s leadership.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Mr. Griffith, however, is the genuinely humble nature in which he carries himself. In an age when athletes are trained from a very young age to revel in the spotlight, Griffith does not conduct himself in a manner that suggests he is putting on a show. When interviewing Brady to get some background information for his Academic All-American nomination, I had to drag every piece of information out of him. He doesn’t have the false humility of a person who initially denies he’s anything special and then spends twenty minutes telling you just how special he really is. The attention he receives as one of the most visible members of campus would be enough to inflate almost any ego, yet Brady acts as though no one on campus should even recognize him.
The Crown College community will enjoy this award, if for no other reason than they enjoy all of Brady’s accomplishments. The students will brag, the faculty will beam, and the athletic staff will applaud. Brady won’t do any of that, so someone has to.