COLLEGE BASKETBALL STANDOUT RECALLS DREAM TEAMTRAINING AT BUTLER HIGH SCHOOL

        KNOXVILLE, TN—A women’s college basketball standout at the University of Tennessee is still building upon lessons she learned as part of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s Student Services program.

        The feature story was published on the govolsextra.com web site.

        Burdick was an outstanding basketball player at Butler, which won the NCHSAA state 4-A championship during her junior year in 2009-10. As a senior, she averaged 23.1 points per game, 15.3 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 5.0 blocks a game, shooting 61 percent from the field and 48 percent from beyond the arc as Butler wound up 30-1 overall.

        Burdick now a junior forward at Tennessee, was a member of the DREAM Team at Butler, which has been an outstanding program at that school for years. The acronym stands for “Daring to Role model Excellence as Athletic Mentors.”

        Burdick credits her involvement with the DREAM Team at Butler with helping her to follow the right pass.  She is quoted in the story as saying, “To this day, I’ve never taken a sip of alcohol and people find that so shocking. I’m in college. People are always going out, but they don’t realize when they ask me why I don’t drink. I tell them because alcoholism runs in my family…Some people could get away with it. I don’t think I will be able to.”

        A two-time Gatorade Player of the Year in North Carolina in high school, Burdick played in all 36 Tennessee games as a freshman and then started 16 games last year, averaging 8.8 points per game and grabbing 6.6 rebounds an outing.  She made the Southeastern Conference Academic Honor Roll last year.

        Our thanks to Janet Prevatte of Butler, who works with the dream team there, for informing the NCHSAA about this story.