A United States tennis star needed to forgo tens of 1000’s of {dollars} to maintain her NCAA eligibility.
As you possibly can guess, she isn’t completely happy about it.
After making it by way of the qualifying rounds, Fiona Crawley, a University of North Carolina senior, made her Grand Slam debut on the U.S. Open on Tuesday, the NY Post stories.
Despite dropping her first-round match to Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Crawley earned $81,000 in prize cash for making the event.
But that left the 21-year-old Tar Heel with a selection: Take the cash and lose NCAA eligibility or hand over her winnings – she selected the latter.
“I would never take the money and never risk my eligibility, but I worked my butt off this week and it seems unreal that there are football and basketball players making millions in NIL deals, and I can’t take the money that I worked so hard for,” Crawley stated, in accordance with The News & Observer.
“It’s so horrible,” she continued. “I can’t even talk about it, I’m sorry. It’s so, so horrible.”
NCAA amateurism guidelines permit student-athletes to gather as much as $10,000 in prize cash, and provided that it comes from the occasion sponsor.
Above that $10,000 threshold, the cash “may not exceed actual and necessary expenses for each subsequent event in the calendar year,” in accordance with NCAA guidelines.
Even after the bitter ending, Crawley stated simply making it to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center was a dream come true.
“I’ve dreamt about this moment for so long … since I was 5 years old and old enough to know what the U.S. Open was,” Crawley stated throughout an interview after qualifying for the U.S. Open.
“After the match, when I finished, I definitely was in shock. I’ve had a day and night to process it, and I’m still definitely in shock.
“I feel like I won’t really digest it until I’m about to serve or return the first point of my first [main-draw] match.”
This article initially appeared on the NY Post and was reproduced with permission.
Source: www.news.com.au
