Adrienne Lerner ’08 Awarded NCAA Jim McKay Scholarship

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has selected student-athlete Adrienne Lerner (NCS '08) as of two 2012 recipients of the Jim McKay Postgraduate Scholarships.

Established in 2008 to honor the contributions of pioneer sports journalist Jim McKay, the program annually awards $10,000 each to one female and one male student-athlete in recognition of their outstanding academic achievement and potential to contribute to the sports communication industry.  

At NCS, Lerner was president of the Athletic Association and captain of the soccer team.   She has just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2012 with a 3.72 GPA and a degree in classical studies with a minor in political science. She plans to pursue a master’s of business administration.  As an undergraduate, Lerner was captain of the soccer team and president of Pennsylvania’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She worked at Penn Sports Network where she performed several duties, including running a camera, show runner and director. She also produced promotional videos for sporting events.

In her application essay Lerner wrote, “Like Mr. McKay, not only do I want to broadcast the sporting event itself, but also explore and present the human stories that are an essential part of the game.”

Lerner interned with NBC’s “Meet the Press” and for Half Yard Productions, producers of the History Channel’s “How the States Got Their Shapes” production – experiences she credits with developing a love for television production. “Its dynamic nature, team approach and necessary attention to detail fit my talents,” she wrote. She will be working for NBC Sports during this summer’s Olympic Games.

In addition to her work experience, this year Lerner earned the honor of magna cum laude and was selected as the soccer team’s most valuable player and Goldklang award winner (an alumni award for devotion to her team). She was an Academic All-Ivy (2011) and was a Capital One Academic All-District (2011). She was elected as a member of the All-Time Penn Team, first team All-Ivy (2011), second team Eastern College Athletic Conference (2011) and the NSCAA All-Mid-Atlantic second team (2011).

In recommending her for the scholarship, the supervisor for her internship at NBC Sports wrote: “She has all the qualities you would hope for in a student-athlete: she’s inquisitive, self-motivated, hard-working, a team player, quietly self-confident. But Adrienne also showed an uncanny talent for learning the culture and subtleties of a sport in a way I have not encountered among the 70-plus interns I have overseen.”

After graduate school Lerner aspires to be a sports producer, managing a production team.