Track twins celebrate academic success

To some, being a student is much more important than being an athlete.

This is the case for twins Courtney and Britney Freiberger, seniors on the IU women’s track and field team who were accepted into the physical therapy graduate program at Northwestern.

The program is ranked as one of the top schools in the country for the specialty.

Courtney said she came to IU with only academics in mind and never sought to make a career out of track and field.

“I always put school first and came to college to get my education,” she said. “I never wanted to be a professional athlete, but track and field was a tremendous opportunity and it allows you to get a good education as well.”

Academically, Northwestern’s Physical Therapy school was ranked as a “Best Graduate School” by US News and World Report.

Britney said she was speechless when told she had gotten into the program since she puts her schoolwork above all else as well.

“I was shaky and excited to know my hard work paid off,” she said. “I consider myself a student more than an athlete, and academics always come first.”

Born in Floyd Knobs, Ind., the twins have done everything together their whole lives – they live together at IU and have all of the same friends. The only major difference between the two is Britney runs hurdles while Courtney runs multiple events.

IU coach Ron Helmer had a hard time individualizing the two, and said it isn’t easy to do when they live such similar lives.

“It is hard to be twins,” Helmer said. “They go to the same school, and they are involved in the same sport, and now they are going to the same grad school.”

In terms of personality differences, both twins agree Courtney is more outgoing than her sister. They also agreed they will be lucky to have each other at school together when in the unfamiliar surroundings of a big city like Chicago.

From an academic standpoint, Britney and Courtney are hardly the first athletes to be successful students at IU. The school boasted 83 athletes who were academic All-Big Ten last year. More specifically, IU had eight female athletes honored as All-Academic honorees in the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Associations.

That doesn’t mean Britney’s and Courtney’s accomplishments are any less important, said Korinth Patterson, their academic adviser, who described the twins as special people when it comes to taking school seriously.

“It has been great to advise Courtney and Britney the past four years, and they are a pleasure to work with,” Patterson said. “They both came in their freshman year and had excellent scholarships and understood the demands of being a Division I athlete as well as pursuing a degree at Indiana University at the same time.”