Bobcat athletic director Steve Schneider recently announced that Peru State golfer Emily Whipple (Lincoln) and football player Gunnar Orcutt (Omaha) were selected as the July Athletes of the Month. They were picked based on their honors earned during the past month.
Whipple and Orcutt were the athletic department’s selections for the Heart of America Athletic Conference (Heart) A.O. Duer nominations. Orcutt eventually was named as the Heart’s winner on July 31. The Duer award was named in honor of the NAIA’s former executive secretary for his 26 years of service to the association. The award is presented annually to one male and one female junior student-athlete in any sport who has excelled in scholarship, character, and citizenship.
At the recent Heart Summit, Orcutt was named as the conference’s winner and will be eligible for the national award which will be announced on September 15. He is very busy on campus while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average through six semesters in biochemical science. Like Whipple, Orcutt is a Board of Trustees Scholar. He is a member of Alpha Chi and Beta Beta Beta and last fall was selected as a CoSIDA Academic All-America First member for football, as well as, being named as a Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete. His other activities are numerous on campus which include numerous leadership roles such as serving as the vice chair for SAAC.
“Peru State truly embraces the importance of the term ‘student-athletes’ and Emily and Gunnar both embody this principle,” noted Schneider when announcing his July selections.
