While her days as a Wittenberg student-athlete are drawing to a close, a career in the field of athletics is just beginning for Emily Hiscar ’06. She’s off to a fine start after earning a prestigious Ethnic Minority and Women’s Enhancement Postgraduate Scholarship for Careers in Athletics from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

Developed by the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics and the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, 26 postgraduate scholarships, split evenly between ethnic minorities and female college graduates, are awarded annually. Each award is valued at $6,000.

“I think what this scholarship will do is help make me more marketable,” Hiscar said. “My degree from Wittenberg will serve as a great foundation, but I have so much more I can learn and gain from real-world experience and studying sports management on a graduate level.”

Hiscar has been a model Wittenberg student-athlete during her four years on campus. A soccer player by trade, Hiscar joined the lacrosse team during her freshman year and quickly became a standout despite the fact that she had never played the game before. She will finish her playing career this spring with eight varsity letters between soccer and lacrosse, but that is just the beginning.
Hiscar has been a starter in the midfield in both sports throughout her collegiate career, serving as team captain of the lacrosse team the last three years and the soccer team the last two. She has earned multiple All-North Coast Athletic Conference awards in each sport, and Hiscar capped her soccer career with Team Most Valuable Player honors in 2005 after previously garnering the award in 2002.

Perhaps most impressive is Hiscar’s role in building the women’s soccer program. The Tigers finished her freshman season with a 6-12 record in 2002. Four years later, Wittenberg has risen to the elite in the NCAC, one of the most competitive conferences in small college women’s soccer, compiling a 14-5 record in 2005 and just missing out on the program’s first-ever berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament.

A campus leader, Hiscar has also excelled in the classroom with a 3.27 grade point average while majoring in communication, and minoring in management and women’s studies. In addition, Hiscar has regularly volunteered in the Springfield community during her four years at Wittenberg and has worked several unpaid internships, including as an assistant to the vice president of sales and marketing for the Major League Soccer franchise Columbus Crew last summer.

The next step is graduate school, with an eye toward a master’s degree in sports management, and a job coaching college soccer. She is considering several opportunities, all with NCAA Division I programs. Wittenberg women’s soccer Head Coach Norm Riker is sure that Hiscar will succeed.

“Emily doesn’t sit back and just let things happen by chance; she goes after them and creates her own success and opportunities,” Riker said. “She leaves behind a great legacy for our team, the athletic department and Wittenberg.”

— Ryan Maurer