Most college sports fans are familiar with the NCAA ad featuring the tagline: “There are more than 380,000 student-athletes, and most of them go pro in something other than sports.”
Although somewhat corny, the fact is it’s true.
And in preparation for going pro in nursing, one of those student-athletes — UW women’s basketball leading scorer Alyssa Karel — spent two weeks this past summer in South Africa as part of the International Scholar Laureate Program.
Karel, a junior guard from St. Paul, Minn., said the ISLP nursing delegation program for which she was selected included about 90 students from across the country who varied in age from 20 to 45. They were in stages of their nursing education from undergraduates recently accepted to nursing school to older nurses working to attain their bachelor of science in nursing.
“What we did mostly was a lot of hospital and clinic visits,” Karel said. “It was really education-based, so we learned a lot about nursing in South Africa and compared it to nursing in the United States.”
In particular, a trip to an orphanage that housed children with HIV-positive mothers stuck out. The mothers would receive care at the orphanage, but were usually in the late stages of the disease and, once they passed, the children would continue receiving attention, medical and otherwise.
“The orphanage was probably something that hit me the hardest,” Karel, an honor student in the UW nursing program, said. “Some of the moms there were younger than me and they had three kids. The people there were in such rough conditions and they were still happy to see us and so friendly.”
In addition, Karel said she was struck by the discrepancy in conditions she saw in South Africa — the most developed African country, nevertheless plagued with an estimated 11.6 percent of its population living with HIV/AIDS in 2005, according to the World Health Organization.
“Cape Town was like really European,” she said. “And it was weird to see the places we were staying in and huge strip malls … you could barely tell you were in a different country, and then you go like two miles down the road and it was just a complete polar opposite.”
Although such a journey is not how typical college students spend their summer break, Karel said she has been motivated to do medical service work in less fortunate regions for some time.
For starters, Karel took a trip to El Salvador in high school which showed her firsthand the dire circumstances facing some countries. Furthermore, Karel said she has been influenced by her brother, who is currently working in the embattled Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans before he commences a six-year medical school program in Cuba.
“It’s just something that called to me,” she said. “They have so little and they’re so grateful for what they have. It just makes you want to help people like that.”
That humility and willingness to help is something that also helps Karel on the basketball court. Currently averaging 12.4 points in a team-best 31.4 minutes a game, head coach Lisa Stone said the effects of Karel’s experiences abroad, as well as her natural altruism, are evident in her play.
“Watch how she plays,” Stone said. “There’s a lot of times I want her to pull the trigger even more, but she’s very unselfish. She has no drama, she goes out and plays and has fun, and it’s fun to watch. … She’s a young woman that I am very proud to say represents our program with the utmost class.”
Tara Steinbauer, a former AAU teammate of Karel’s and the Badgers’ second-leading scorer thus far at nine points per game, said the South Africa trip came as no surprise to her.
“I’ve known Alyssa for about eight years now and she genuinely has a warm heart,” Steinbauer said. “She’s always talked about going and helping people in other countries. … I think it’s a great thing that she wants to do that, and we fully support her.”
Going forward, Karel said she wants to become a nurse practitioner, which requires graduate school, before gaining some work experience and, ultimately, opening or joining a clinic in South or Central America or Africa.
As for her unique South African journey, Karel said witnessing subpar living and medical conditions was an eye-opening experience — one so special it could even ease the pain of a Big Ten-opening loss.
“It really just kind of makes you see the bigger picture,” Karel said. “You have a terrible loss to Ohio State, which you wanted so bad, it’s like, ‘Well, what’s the bigger picture here?’ It just kind of opens your eyes so you see that not everything is basketball in the world.”
Sounds like she’s ready to go pro early.
