After four years on the Kalamazoo College football team, Brad Bez '19 was not ready to give up his love for the sport.
He is no longer playing, but is working as a graduate assistant football coach at Wayne State University while working towards a master's degree in athletic administration.
The history major from Okemos (MI) High School was on the offensive line at K, and his senior season he helped the team to a 7-3 record, the program's most wins since 1962.
He was also named to the MIAA Academic Honor Roll his senior year.
His internship and externship also involved football. The summer before his junior year, he worked with the Kalamazoo College Athletic Department and the next summer with the Michigan State University Athletic Department.
Bez was one of just 240 juniors and seniors to be selected to participate in the NCAA Career in Sports Forum at the NCAA's national office in Indianapolis in late May and early June 2018.
For his Senior Individualized Project, he segued to rugby, investigating Brutus, Mandela, Robben Island and the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and the Impact on the Social Climate of Apartheid South Africa.
Bez said the most important thing he learned as an athlete at K was time management and hard work.
"As student-athletes, we have to balance a lot of things between our sport, school, friends, family, and other activities, but being a student-athlete made me more equipped to balance all of those things on top of building a strong work ethic that I will carry with me into my career," he said.
In addition, "K definitely made me think in different ways and have a better understanding of a more diverse group of people than I had previously interacted with. Being at K made me more empathetic and I think that is a valuable tool moving forward."
Kalamazoo College prepares its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world. The College's 1,467 students come from 39 states and 28 countries. Through the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities, including study abroad, career internships and externships, civic engagement and social justice work. K's student-faculty ratio of 13-to-1 allows for small classes and personal attention to individual needs; student-faculty interaction goes beyond the classroom to include working together on research projects, college committees, and community projects. At Kalamazoo College, we do more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.