By Paul Perillo

Every once in a while, an athlete whose accomplishments transcend sports comes along.

Take, for example, nineteen-year-old Zara Northover. She excels as a member of the America East champion women’s track team, throwing the shot put better than any other woman in the conference. But that doesn’t begin to tell this sophomore’s full story.

A native of Jamaica living in Elmont, New York, Northover filled her high school years with extracurricular activities, including the presidency of her class. As a Northeastern freshman, she limited her focus to academics and athletics. This year, she broadened her horizons a bit more. Actually, that’s like saying J.Lo has made a few media appearances lately.

It started with a letter Northover wrote to the Athletics department, asking why the 2002 Atlantic 10 champion football squad had received rings in honor of their accomplishment while other title-winning programs, like her own track team, did not. Impressed by her passion, university officials urged her to apply for a spot on Northeastern’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). Northover’s now an SAAC member, acting as a liaison between student-athletes and the university, helping create athletics policy, and fostering town-gown connections.

That’s not all. She also serves as a host to prospective Husky recruits, works with the Legacy 2000 program as a mentor for black and Latino freshmen, makes speeches about the Northeastern experience to raise money for various programs, and acts as a university spokesperson at Boston high school seminars.

“It’s all about time management,” Northover says with a laugh, when asked how she fits everything into her schedule. “My classes are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so I have Tuesdays and Fridays off. Those days are always completely booked. I joke with my friends that if they want to reach me, they better call around midnight, because otherwise I’m not around.”

And Northover has yet another responsibility to juggle: her appointment as America East’s representative to the prestigious NCAA Division 1 Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Fittingly, she was off on an adventure when she learned of her selection.

“I was in Jamaica last summer, trying out for the Jamaican Junior National Team,” Northover recalls. “I got a letter from my mom saying that I was elected by the America East and Northeastern to the NCAA committee. I didn’t even know I had been nominated.”

As one of only thirty students on the national committee, Northover traveled to Nashville in January for a conference at which committee members discussed the rights of student-athletes, recruiting rules, and other regulations that affect athletes on NCAA-member campuses.

“Basically, we want people to realize they have a voice,” Northover says. “We initiate many of the rules that get passed, and we’re always discussing issues like study hall time, the fifteen-hour rule, and weight room time. Many athletes, unfortunately, don’t know their rights.”

Before she made her college decision, Northover read everything she could find on the Internet about recruiting, realizing it was largely a business transaction, an insight that opened a lot of doors for her. It’s why she’s been so intent on helping other athletes clear that hurdle, as well as many others they face thereafter.

“As a mentor, you’re always there for someone to talk to,” Northover says. “I try to give pointers on doing well in class and managing time. Without having someone to explain basics like that, things can get a bit overwhelming.”

Despite her own heavy workload, Northover continues to shine in and out of the classroom. Double-majoring in business and communication studies, she plans to attend law school, and perhaps become an athletics director someday.

On the field, she’s close to breaking the school shot-put record set by Sandy Burke in the early 1980s. When the Huskies won their second straight conference indoor title in February, Northover reset the America East Championship record with a throw of 52 feet 9.5 inches. Then she won her second Eastern College Athletic Conference title. This month, she’ll defend her America East outdoor title.

What else? As a freshman, Northover qualified for the nationals and finished fourteenth in the country, putting herself into position for a possible Olympic berth this year or in 2008.

“She’s involved in everything, on and off campus,” her coach, Sherman Hart, says. “She’s one of our team leaders, obviously, and she’s very outgoing and bubbly. She’s always very positive, and her blood is red and black. She enjoys everything she does.”

That’s saying a lot.

Hager hopes to build on gridders’ success

With a new coach at its helm, the Northeastern football program is poised to build on the most successful period in its sixty-eight-year history.

But R. E. “Rocky” Hager, hired by the university in mid-March, still has a big job ahead.

The former Temple University assistant coach has to keep the Huskies winning as well as eliminate any lingering ill will over the resignation of Don Brown, who left Northeastern in February to become the head coach at the University of Massachusetts­Amherst.

Over his four seasons at Northeastern, Brown had compiled a 27-20 record. In 2002, he boosted the Husky squad to an eleventh-place national ranking, the best in school history; its first-ever Atlantic 10 title; and a playoff berth.

Brown’s abrupt departure stung. In March, Northeastern, claiming breach of contract, won an injunction preventing the coach from starting his new job. That injunction was lifted by court order in early April, and an undisclosed agreement between UMass and Northeastern was worked out before the end of the month.

Looking toward the future, athletics director Dave O’Brien, who worked with Hager at Temple, thinks he has the right man to succeed Brown.

Hager was recruiting coordinator and tight-ends coach for seven years at Temple. He also won two national championships during his nine years as head coach at North Dakota State University, as well as an earlier two while serving as defensive coordinator.

“Rocky Hager is the ideal coach for Northeastern’s football program at this time in our history,” says O’Brien, citing Hager’s solid experience, his commitment to the academic and personal welfare of student-athletes, and his “unquestioned integrity.”

That last attribute is crucial, given the events that unfolded earlier this spring. When head coach Mark Whipple left UMass­Amherst in January to work for the Pittsburgh Steelers, O’Brien gave Brown a contract extension and a pay raise for himself and his staff to keep him at Northeastern (Brown had worked with Whipple at both UMass and Brown University). But two weeks later, Brown left for Amherst, taking his seven assistants with him.

Northeastern then filed suit against Brown and UMass, which had not been granted permission to speak with Brown.

Said O’Brien just after Brown’s departure, “Contracts are not one-way streets; they are two-way streets. This did not occur in a manner consistent with our contract, nor did it occur in a proper manner from UMass’s perspective.”

Hager, fifty-two, brings with him a solid resumé that includes twenty-seven years of coaching at the high school and collegiate levels. Much of his success came as head coach of North Dakota State. Between 1987 and 1996, Hager compiled a gaudy 91-25-1 mark, made seven appearances in the national Division 2 playoffs, and was named National Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association in 1988 and 1990, when he won national titles.

He went to Temple in 1997 as quarterbacks coach and switched to inside linebackers before spending the last four

seasons as the Owls’ tight-ends coach and recruiting coordinator.

As he takes charge of his new team, Hager says he has his sights trained on ambitious goals: “to win the Atlantic 10 championship, earn an NCAA playoff berth, win NCAA playoff games, and, ultimately, win a [Division] 1-AA national championship.”