Naber Earns NCAA Silver Anniversary Award

INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 6. SWIMMING legend John Naber is among the six NCAA Silver Anniversary Award recipients announced today by the NCAA Honors Committee.

The Silver Anniversary Award recognizes former student-athletes who have distinguished themselves since completing their college athletics careers 25 years ago.

Past aquatics winners include three-time Olympian, Dr. Gary Hall Sr., and Olympic diver Cynthia Potter.

This year's honorees have achieved a wide range of accomplishments since they graduated from college. For instance, two of the six were gold-medal winners in the 1976 Olympic Games, one was a United States Secretary of Transportation, one is a winner of 34 Ladies Professional Golf Association career titles, one is the leader of the nation’s largest compensation and benefits consulting company, and another is a former NBA player and the basketball coach at a large university.

This year’s honorees are:
· Richard C. Chapman, Augustana College (South Dakota), basketball, president and chief executive officer of a compensation and benefits consulting company.

· Maurice "Bo" Ellis, Marquette University, basketball, men’s head basketball coach at Chicago State University.

· Herman R. Frazier, Arizona State University, track and field, director of athletics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

· Betsy King, Furman University, golf and basketball, professional golfer.

· John Naber, University of Southern California; swimming and diving; operator of Naber and Associates, a firm that provides motivational speakers and other services.

· Rodney E. Slater, Eastern Michigan University, football, an attorney at a Washington, D.C., law firm.

The recipients will be honored Sunday, January 13, at the Honors Dinner during the annual NCAA Convention in Indianapolis.

The award winners were selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, which is composed of eight athletics administrators at member institutions and nationally distinguished citizens who are former student-athletes. The members of the NCAA Honors Committee are: Harry Carson, president, Harry Carson, Inc.; Eugene F. Corrigan, commissioner emeritus, Atlantic Coast Conference; Joseph Crowley, regents’ professor/president emeritus, University of Nevada; Clyde Doughty Jr., athletics director, New York Institute of Technology; Jack Ford, ABC news anchor/correspondent; Jo Ann Harper, senior associate athletics director, Dartmouth College; Karen L. Johnson, director of institutional research, Alfred University and Valerie Richardson, assistant commissioner, West Coast Conference.

Potential candidates are nominated by NCAA member institutions and selected by the committee.

John Naber
University of Southern California
Swimming and diving
Operator, Naber and Associates

The four-time 1976 Olympic gold medalist set world records in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke and the 400- and 800-meter medley relay and also won a silver medal in the 200-meter freestyle that same year. In addition, he set 100- and 200-meter Olympic backstroke records that lasted seven years after his retirement.

As a college student-athlete, he led the University of Southern California to four straight NCAA team championships from 1974 through 1977 and was a 15-time champion (10 individual titles and five on relay teams). The high-point scorer at all four NCAA championships in which he competed, Naber was named an NCAA Today’s Top V recipient in 1978. He won the 1977 James E. Sullivan Award as the nation’s Amateur Athlete of the Year.

Since 1982, he has operated Naber and Associates, which provides motivational speakers, personal appearances, sports-related marketing and consultations for corporations interested in using athletes for promotions. He was an Olympic broadcaster in 2000 in Sydney, his seventh Olympic assignment, and has been a play-by-play host for more than 30 different Olympic sports, as well as an announcer for NBC Sports, CBS Sports and ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

Naber is president of the United States Olympic Alumni Association, and he served as a torchbearer in the Olympic Torch Relay in 1984 and 1996 and will do so again in 2002.

He has worked for the Children’s Miracle Network and is an active fund-raiser for the United States Olympic Committee and his alma mater. Naber also is a member of the Character Counts sports all-stars and an advisor to the Character Counts! Coalition and has worked with the Healthy Competition Foundation to educate youth of the dangers of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

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