Senior athletes aim for pro careers

Recruiters come to Princeton’s campus every year to find seniors who will join the next crop of bankers, consultants, and public servants. But several graduates will be a different kind of professional after they walk through FitzRandolph Gate: student-athletes who continue to compete, either professionally or as Olympic hopefuls.

 

Basketball star Kareem Maddox ’11, the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and a unanimous first team All-Ivy selection, plans to play professionally overseas. He started the season as a talented sixth man, but finished the year as the leading scorer and rebounder for the Ivy-champion Tigers. Maddox said he is in the process of hiring an agent and will start working out with different teams this summer.

 

“It’s an opportunity to not only play more, but to travel for a few years and expand your horizons. I’m hoping to learn a new language and do volunteer work,” Maddox said.  Dan Mavraides ’11, a starting guard for the Tigers, also plans to play abroad following graduation.

 

Some athletes have already started playing professionally. Senior squash standout Dave Letourneau has been competing in professional tournaments after his season ended in March, and a number of men’s hockey players have joined professional teams.

 

Senior defenseman Cam Ritchie played for part of this spring with the Victoria Salmon Kings of Victoria, B.C., of the East Coast Hockey League, and defenseman Taylor Fedun has signed with the Edmonton Oilers of the NHL for next year. Ritchie said all of the team’s seniors are looking to play professionally.

 

“Hockey is something we have always done for our whole lives and to make some money doing it is pretty special,” Ritchie said in an e-mail. “I love playing hockey so it is nice to have the opportunity to keep doing it.”

 

Ashley Higginson ’11, an All-American track runner, plans to continue running next year with the hopes of making the Olympic Trials in the steeplechase before moving onto law school.

 

“With a year until the trials, you can always get going on the rest of your life, but you only get a little while longer to give athletic dreams a shot,” Higginson wrote in an e-mail. “I knew I would regret not seeing how my training could go without my academic schedule.”

 

In addition to these athletes, men’s soccer players Josh Walburn ’11 and Teddy Schneider ’11 both were drafted by Major League Soccer teams, and Schneider recently signed a contract with the New York Red Bulls. Senior lacrosse player Jack McBride also was drafted by Major League Lacrosse in January.