UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 09 | May 10, 2001

Athlete proves high-scorer on all courts

Team player gets set to tackle the ivy league

Melanie Griswold describes her LSAT result as if it were just another routine win for her top-ranked Thunderbird women's volleyball team.

"I had a good test," says the modest six-foot middle blocker from Kelowna.

Her score placed in the top one per cent in North America.

"My friends couldn't believe I was thinking about Harvard law school because I have a reputation for always losing things, like keys and mittens," she laughs. "I began to think it was possible when I got my LSAT scores back."

A Commerce and Business Administration graduate who majored in Industrial Relations Management, Griswold applied to nine of the top U.S. schools including Yale, Stanford and Berkeley.

She was accepted at seven and narrowed her decision down to Harvard and the offer of a dean's scholarship at New York University.

"I loved Harvard with its old buildings, and I'm looking forward to the experience and exposure to world leaders and Nobel Prize winners -- people who are shaping the world around us."

Griswold arrived at UBC in 1995 and cracked the roster of a team described as one of the best in UBC history in any sport.

They went to the national finals every year she played, but could not overcome the five-time champion Alberta Pandas in their quest for the national crown.

After two years travelling in Asia and Australia, she returned last fall to finish her degree and play one last season with the T-Birds.

"Being a varsity athlete was like having a family that immediately adopted me," she says. "I wasn't the star of the team, so for me it was the friendships that mattered rather than the achievements athletically. I was very lucky to have played with so many great people."

Besides volleyball, Griswold credits her professors in Industrial Relations Management for making UBC a meaningful experience and for sparking her enthusiasm to pursue a career in civil law.

"It's going to be difficult to say goodbye," she says whimsically. "Overall, it has been pretty comfortable."