The University of Lethbridge is handing out a record number of All-Canadian awards to student athletes this year and is hoping a raffle will help pay for them all.
Seventy-four student athletes earned the awards this year, which are $500 rewards for those with a grade point average of 3.4 or higher and are recognized across Canada.
Pronghorns Athletics introduced its first Horns Holiday Raffle to support the awards during the last school year after 63 scholarships were awarded.
“What we were finding was that as our numbers of academic All-Canadians were growing, we’re running out of money to support these awards,” Pronghorns development officer Robb Engen said on Thursday.
This year’s Horns Holiday Raffle will give away 12 trips in 12 months. Five-hundred tickets are up for grabs priced at $125 each. Organizers say net proceeds will provide up to $30,000 towards Academic All-Canadian awards for U of L student athletes.
Zoe Dahl is one of five members of the Pronghorns women’s basketball team receiving the $500 award.
“We don’t get an opportunity to work during the year,” she said. “It’s really, really challenging to find time to work, so having a little bit of extra money to help with basic student needs is really, really awesome,” the fifth-year kinesiology student said.
Dahl’s coach, Mike Adams, said the girls already had 102 practices and 25 games while also spending hours working out and travelling. He said being able to maintain high grades at the same time is quite impressive.
“When you think about all the challenges that would come with time management and still be excellent in the classroom and on the hardwood, they’re pretty amazing people,” he said.
According to Pronghorns Athletics, the record number of student athletes achieving the prestigious status accounts for nearly one-third of the school’s eligible athletes.