Eastern’s athletics were recently recognized as the top in the OVC except for Samford, which is a private school, and second amongst Illinois public schools in overall graduation rate.

Two of the people responsible for this accomplishment is the Assistant Director of Athletics for Compliance Betty Ralston and the Director of Academic Services Cindy Tozer.

Tozer and Ralston, who both deal directly with the athletes and the coaches, are two of the people who keep track of the athletes and try to help them achieve in the classroom as well as excel on the field.

The only problem these two ladies have with the fact that Eastern’s athletes are highly ranked amongst the OVC and public state schools is they might get some of the credit for what is taking place at Eastern.

Both have come to the conclusion that the student athletes who do the work should get the credit.

“I just want it to be known how hard they work on a daily basis to keep their grades up as well as how much they exert themselves for their coaches,” Ralston said.

Even though they may not want to admit it, both Ralston and Tozer play an instrumental role in keeping track of the athletes and how they do in the classroom.

The reason education plays such a large role in the athlete’s life here at Eastern is because most players will not be playing professional sports by the time they are ready to graduate.

“There is more of an emphasis here on getting the athletes their degrees than at larger schools because most of them will need to enter the work force instead of entering professional sports,” Ralston said.

Ralston, as the Director of Athletics for Compliance, deals directly with eligibility rules placed down by the NCAA. She has realized this is a time of transition for student-athletes as the NCAA changes its eligibility rules.

The NCAA has put into place a series of rules changes dealing with eligibility, which are stricter, for the most part. Some of the rules are forcing the athletes to take more credit hours every semester, stretching what little time they already had even more thin.

In preparation for these changes, Ralston beat the NCAA to the punch and made the same rules the governing body of college athletics was going to make, a year earlier.

“We implemented these rules a year ago so that it would be a smoother transition for the student-athletes,” Ralston said. “A lot of people don’t understand how much work these athletes do behind the scenes and in the classroom.

With the academic standards getting tougher we needed to do something to help the athletes out.”

Ralston also understands how to deal with the players and coaches because of her background in coaching at Eastern.

As one of the most successful volleyball coaches Eastern has had, Ralston knows what is going on in the heads of the athletes.

“She is the best we have had at that position,” Eastern football coach Bob Spoo said. “She helps with almost everything we have to deal with in athletics and academics. She and Cindy Tozer are both great at interacting with our student-athletes, and they keep our players on track.”

While Ralston deals with the NCAA and keeps track of what is being done on a National level and seeing how that affects Eastern, Tozer is interacting with Eastern’s athletes and coaches on a more individual level.

As Director of Academic Services, Tozer handles many of Eastern’s athletes and tries to keep them doing the right thing in the classroom.

During the eight years Tozer has worked at Eastern, she has developed many relationships with the players and coaches she has helped along the way.

“I think having a good relationship with the players leads to having a good understanding of what they need and how to help them,” Tozer said.

The work that Tozer and Ralston have done together have formed a feeling of unity within the academic services that Eastern offers to the student-athletes.

Both has worked together and understand what each needs to do to get their jobs done.

“We’re a team, and we both know what is going on and can help out without many problems,” Tozer said. “It seems as though we share the same office because we work on the same problems a lot of the time.”

Now the goal for both of the two academic advisers is to increase the graduation rates even further .

Even though Eastern’s graduation rate numbers compared to the rest of the OVC are in good shape, Ralston believes they can rise even higher.

“With transfer students possibly being included in graduation rates, we expect the numbers to keep rising,” Ralston said. “Everyone strives for the impossible 100 percent graduation rate, but more realistically, we would like to see our numbers just continue to improve.”