Courtesy: David Kiefer
SEATTLE – This is a big week for Stanford senior Justin Brinkley. Before he got the chance to step to the starting line at the Pac-12 Championships this weekend, Brinkley received an NCAA postgraduate scholarship on Wednesday. And on Friday he was named track and field's Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Brinkley is a communication major and religious studies minor from Kingwood, Texas, and carries a GPA of 3.83.
In December, Brinkley received the Pac-12 Leadership Award, and he has earned several academic all-conference honors throughout his career. This week's awards can only help in his quest for the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. If he receives either, Brinkley will aim for a master's of philosophy in theology and religious studies, with an emphasis on the New Testament.
“Ultimately, I want to be a New Testament scholar,” Brinkley said.
Two recent Stanford runners, Kate Niehaus and Miles Unterreiner, earned Rhodes scholarships and that makes the possibility more real. Brinkley also is looking at the religion and divinity schools at Yale and Duke if he isn't able to secure scholarships to Oxford or Scotland's St. Andrew's.
Brinkley is particularly interested in the Jewish world and its expectations leading up to the birth of Jesus and how its views were affected during the early Christian movement after Jesus' death. Brinkley is prepared to learn Greek, Hebrew, and even the ancient languages of Aramaic and Coptic to decipher accounts of that period.
“It's exciting to dig into the history and dig into the text, and put yourself in other people's shoes, while doing that in a context of faith,” Brinkley said.
On the track, Brinkley won the U.S. junior national championship in the 1,500 as a freshman, and hoped for big things as a junior, but was hampered by Achilles and hamstring problems. He recovered enough to advance to the NCAA West Prelims, but ran with a bout of bronchitis. Still, Brinkley missed advancing to his first NCAA outdoor championship meet by three places.
Injury-free and with a solid off-season training foundation, Brinkley secured a spot on Stanford's distance medley relay team, which set a school record and ran the fifth-fastest time in collegiate history, and later was fourth at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Brinkley, running the 800 leg, received his first All-America honor.
Now, in his final season, Brinkley has been more consistent than ever, but feels he has more to offer than his solid personal best of 3:43.44 in the 1,500.
“Faster times are in my legs, but what I'm most excited about is I feel like I don't have anything to lose,” Brinkley said. “I don't have any major expectations to win an NCAA championship or medal or anything, but I think those things aren't outside the realm of possibility if I just get in and compete really tough."
He'll run a 1,500 prelim on Saturday, with the final on Sunday.
Brinkley has been honored for his leadership and, as the finish line of his collegiate career comes into focus, is cognizant of his legacy in the program, particularly in the context of two young stars as teammates, redshirt sophomore Sean McGorty and freshman Grant Fisher, who have great futures ahead.
“When I came to the realization that I probably wasn't going to be an Olympian or be in a World Championships final, I felt a sense of responsibility to encourage and be a leader for them,” Brinkley said. “When I leave, I can say that I did everything I could to encourage them to keep putting the work in, so that hopefully I'll see them on a TV screen in 2020 when I'm watching the Tokyo Olympics.”
And perhaps they will recall a teammate who kept them on that path and speaks a little Aramaic.