{"id":43478,"date":"2011-07-01T13:39:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T17:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=43478"},"modified":"2011-08-18T15:05:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T19:05:19","slug":"academic-coach-on-the-bench","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/07\/academic-coach-on-the-bench\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic Coach on the Bench"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alyssa<\/a>
Alyssa Budkofsky \u201901 (ED) listens to the student-athletes on the men\u2019s basketball team at Quinnipiac University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Alyssa Budkofsky \u201901 (ED) listens to the student-athletes on the men\u2019s basketball team at Quinnipiac University describe the challenges of getting their schoolwork done and still meeting their obligations for practice, games, and travel, she is sympathetic up to a point.<\/p>\n

After all, Budkofsky, assistant athletic director for men\u2019s basketball academic support at Quinnipiac, once faced a similar situation herself, as a student manager for the Huskies. Today, she tells her student-athletes: \u201cI had to go to practice and go to class. I know you\u2019re going to have to make sacrifices in your personal life, but that\u2019s what you have to do to make that commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after earning her degree in sports marketing, Budkofsky received a call from Karl Hobbs \u201984 (CLAS), who had been named head coach at George Washington University after being an assistant coach to Jim Calhoun at UConn, asking if she would \u00a0be interested in going to graduate school and working as a student manager. While obtaining a master\u2019s degree in business administration, Budkofsky tutored basketball players at George Washington to earn extra money. With her MBA in hand, she then spent a year and a half working for the management division of Ripken Baseball, led by former Baltimore Orioles star Cal Ripken Jr., before returning to George Washington as an academic advisor and earning a second master\u2019s degree in \u00a0higher education.<\/p>\n

Budkofsky started as academic advisor for men\u2019s basketball in 2007 at Quinnipiac, when Tom Moore was named head men\u2019s coach, and established an academic advisor position for his team. Moore, a former assistant coach to Calhoun at UConn, had previously hired Budkofsky as a student manager for the Huskies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlyssa has been invaluable in our efforts to establish a culture of academic excellence in our men\u2019s basketball program,\u201d says Moore. \u201cHer work ethic, loyalty, and commitment to the \u00a0academic process have been the driving forces behind us being noted by FoxSports as having the largest increase in our academic progress rate score of any Division I men\u2019s basketball program \u00a0in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Budkofsky met Moore on her first day in Storrs as a freshman in 1997, when she visited the men\u2019s basketball office to see how she could get involved with the team. The meeting put her in a front-row seat for a basketball journey she never anticipated, including being part of the Huskies\u2019 first NCAA title in 1999.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was never very good at sports,\u201d says Budkofsky, who sits on the team bench during games. \u201cI played softball and danced. I grew up in Connecticut [in Bloomfield] and loved watching UConn basketball. That\u2019s where my passion for sports started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Budkofsky has not only offered academic support to her student-athletes, but has also worked with Quinnipiac assistant coach Scott Burrell \u201910 (BGS). Burrell, who left UConn before completing his degree to pursue his playing career in the NBA, completed his UConn degree requirements 17 years after he left Storrs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Alyssa Budkofsky \u201901 (ED) listens to the student-athletes on the men\u2019s basketball team at Quinnipiac University describe the challenges of getting their schoolwork done and still meeting their obligations for practice, games, and travel, she is sympathetic up to a point. After all, Budkofsky, assistant athletic director for men\u2019s basketball academic support at Quinnipiac, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":43594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-43478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 05:37:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43478"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44675,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43478\/revisions\/44675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/43594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43478"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=43478"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=43478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}