Excellence on the Courts, in Classes Drives BVU Senior
Destiny Einerwold has excelled in both her academic and athletic pursuits at BVU. The senior will continue her education upon graduation with the goal of becoming a nurse practitioner.
Destiny Einerwold, who led the Buena Vista University women’s basketball team with a 15.3 points per game scoring average, was close to the top of her team when it comes to another important average—grade point average.
Einerwold’s 3.835 GPA was part of a team grade point average of 3.855 compiled during the fall semester. The entire team had only one B grade at the mid-term point of the second semester.
“There’s a lot of pride on our team when it comes to academics,” says Einerwold, a senior biomedical sciences major who minors in Spanish. “Our team was honored last year at the BVU Athletic Banquet for having the highest team GPA.”
“The student part of a student-athlete comes first.”
Destiny Einerwold
The team, interestingly, was one of 16 BVU squads to top the 3.0 GPA mark last fall.
“The student part of a student-athlete comes first,” says Einerwold, whose cumulative GPA is 3.86. “Students in our program come to BVU to become professionals, leaders in their fields; people who can change lives for 40 years and more after they graduate.”
Einerwold, an Orange City native, was a valedictorian at MOC-FV High School who chose BVU primarily because of its strong School of Science. The fact she could compete in basketball and then tennis was a bonus. Her athletic involvement took her to sites across the United States and to Costa Rica, where the basketball team competed two summers ago.
Einerwold’s academic pursuit took her to an internship at Sports Rehab & Professional Therapy Associates, where she observed Dr. Brad Rohwer, physical therapist, among others. It was Rohwer, a 1991 BVU graduate, who directed Einerwold’s rehab as she recovered from a broken foot that resulted in torn ligaments and bone spurs. Einerwold rehabbed after a pair of surgeries in 2018, working her way into basketball shape by competing on the women’s tennis team.
Her journey back to collegiate competition intensified her interest in the medical field, putting her on a track to become a nurse practitioner. A Spanish minor, she says, will aid her in a quest to fully communicate with while treating a wider range of patients. Einerwold, who served as a Spanish tutor three times per week in BVU’s Center for Academic Excellence, examined a dual-language program serving children in the Denison-Schleswig Community School District for a BVU Honors Project.
“I love Spanish, and being able to speak it can only help me help others as I advance my career in the medical field,” she says.
That career gets going in earnest in January 2021 as Einerwold has been accepted into the Accelerated Nursing Program at the University of Sioux Falls.
As she has on the basketball court and in the classroom, Einerwold aims to connect again in her professional destiny. “There is a need for healthcare providers everywhere,” she says.