After Success on the Court, Bentley Turns to Medical Field
10/13/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
This is the fourth of a six-part series of profiles on the University of Alabama’s 2006 ESPN the Magazine/CoSIDA Academic All-Americans. At the University of Alabama, the tradition of success extends far beyond the field of play. Success in the classroom has long been a Crimson Tide staple and perhaps nothing better demonstrates that better than the fact that six Alabama student-athletes earned ESPN the Magazine Academic All-American honors last season, a mark that led the Southeastern Conference and ranked in top five among all Division I schools. Those six, Guido Arroyo, Ashley Bentley, Beth Mallory, Vlad Polyakov, Emeel Salem and Joseph Sykora will be honored before this weekend’s Alabama-Ole Miss football game.
Last spring, Ashley Bentley earned her second trip to the NCAA Doubles Championships and left the University of Alabama as the women’s tennis all-time winningest doubles player, along with former teammate Robin Stephenson. But she’s doing pretty well by herself, too.
A graduate with a degree in Spanish, Bentley finished her academics at Alabama in three-and-a-half years and has since applied to medical school and taken the MCAT in hopes of being admitted to the August 2007 medical school class. Being named one of six UA Academic All-Americans, she said, has been a goal of hers for a long time.
“It’s an amazing honor and really special to me,” she said. “I was raised to know that academics are number one in front of tennis. I always knew what an Academic All-American was for a long time, and I think mostly everyone knows, so that’s a testament to what an honor it is. To achieve success on the court and in the classroom is one of the most special things to happen to me.”
Bentley said that after med school, she wants to enter into the surgical field in some capacity. She credits her success in the classroom to Alabama’s Academic Support Staff and good time management, and though her grades may not have shown it, Bentley said it wasn’t always easy to balance the athletic life with the academic.
“You can’t completely balance it,” she said. “Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. There’s times when I slipped up on the court or slipped up in the classroom, but you have to know when to adjust. We have one of the greatest academic support staffs, and they make it hard not succeed.”
Bentley left Alabama in one of the most successful senior classes ever under head coach Jenny Mainz. Her legacy, Mainz said, is unparalleled.
“Ashley Bentley is the epitome of the word student-athlete,” Mainz said. “She excelled in the classroom and on the court and she’s obviously very academically inclined, but it wasn’t just that. She came in with a year’s worth of credits and graduated a semester early. She’s an exemplary student; she’s a frontrunner. It was her attitude, her effort, her pride, it was that she was a true ambassador to the University of Alabama in every aspect, and she took a lot of pride in that.”
