Whether they're trying to sink 19 of 20 free throws or weaving through buoys at 34 mph, athletes strive for perfection and rarely settle for anything less. Law students, too, strive for perfection. So when established athletes are removed from their fields, pools or gymnasiums, perfection is no longer a desire. It's an obsession. It's a way of life.But despite this unheralded commitment to excellence on and off the playing fields, these students' added athletic dimension helps keep their law school experience in proper perspective. They don't allow their sports or their studies to completely take over their lives. Take athletes Nick Bravin, Kristi Overton-Johnson and Tia Glass, for instance.
When Bravin entered Columbia University School of Law in 1994, he was the top-ranked foil fencer in the country and a three-time defending national champion. But throughout his first year of classes, his studies took most of his energy - and most of his practice time from fencing. "For the five years before law school, I had established myself in the United States and as an up-and-comer in other countries," says Bravin, now a third-year student at Columbia. "During my first year, I tried to do law school and fencing as hard as I could. I was able to do that and still remain strong in fencing because there was a lot of room between myself and the other fencers." It quickly became evident that Bravin had lost some of his athletic edge while pouring over case law. So he decided to take a one-year hiatus from classes before the start of his second year and concentrate on making the Olympic fencing team. He finished 39th at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Not wanting to completely give up his legal studies, Bravin spent the summer of 1995 in Los Angeles clerking for Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. When he traveled to Europe to compete in fencing tournaments in the fall and winter, Bravin continued to work for Reinhardt, express-mailing bench memos to the judge's clerks back in California. "It was a good way to keep a hand in the law and to keep some intellectual stimulation," Bravin says. Bravin eventually made the Olympic team but lost in the opening round to a Polish fencer he had never lost to before. But he doesn't blame law school for its effect on his fencing. "I could've put fencing first, but then I would've lost a lot of experiences in the law," he says.
Bravin worked for Williams and Connelly in Washington, D.C., last summer and will clerk for a federal judge in Denver after graduation. While he hasn't completely ruled out the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, he admits that Denver's fencing opportunities are slim.
Kristi Overton-Johnson, who graduated from the University of Florida College of Law last year, broke her own world record three times during her last year of law school. She is the world's top-ranked women's slalom water skier, a four-time Masters slalom champion, and the current world recordholder.
Overton-Johnson said waterskiing is the reason she graduated from law school with honors and why she has maintained her world ranking. "All the other skiers only had skiing to focus on," she says. "I had something to take that focus away, so there wasn't as much pressure."
Overton-Johnson took the Florida bar in July, but she's not ready to practice law just yet. She's expecting a baby in January, and plans on competing again as soon as she is able. Tai Glass, a third-year student at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, jokingly says she went to law school to learn how to play basketball. But the truth is that she was already well-schooled in the sport before entering law school.
Glass was an all-American at St. Joseph's College in Indiana, helping her school win more than 100 games in her four years there. She averaged 24 points and 10 rebounds per game. She played on the Olympic National Team in 1993 in Mexico City with the intention of being recruited to play overseas. But when she realized that women players in some countries weren't given the respect or salary they deserved, she gave up the idea of foreign play.
With the Women's National Basketball Association getting off the ground, Glass has been toying with the idea of trying out for professional basketball here at home. Although she admits that she's not as physically fit as she was in college, she regularly competes in a men's league, where she has learned to be a smarter player on the court.
"Basketball has been my identification for so long, and it's been the one thing I've been good at," Glass says. "Who's good at law school? Five percent?"
If "being good at law school means being good at other things" bears any truth, then Bravin, Overton-Johnson and Glass are, perhaps, that 5 percent.
Tommy Sangchompuphen
September 1997 Table of Contents | Student Lawyer | Law Student Division
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