Scholar/athlete shoots, scores Rice President’s Fellowship

Troy Ruths, Final Four star at Washington U, courts success in graduate studies

By MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

When Troy Ruths leans forward and talks about his future at Rice and beyond, he does so with complete confidence.

	TROY RUTHS

And why not? The young man who begins his career as a graduate student at Rice this week has a background that pretty much defines excellence.

Ruths will attend Rice to study computer science on a President’s Fellowship, the same honor his brother Derek attained on the way to the doctoral program he’ll soon complete here. But there’s something more extraordinary about the way Ruths carries himself. Perhaps it’s his standing as a champion.

Ruths comes to Rice with both a 4.0 GPA from Washington University in St. Louis and a 20.5 points-per-game average as a member of the Division III national championship basketball team this year, capped by his 33-point performance in leading his Bears to its first Final Four title in a 90-68 victory over Amherst College last March.

For his efforts off and on the court, he was recently named ESPN’s College Division Academic All-American of the Year, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

And still, he looks forward to doing greater things.

”I’m going into bioinformatics,” said the 22-year-old Ruths. ”There’s a whole host of problems that biologists have that computer scientists can provide the solutions for. It’s really exciting to be here at Rice for that, especially with its proximity to the Texas Medical Center.

Troy Ruths, named ESPN's College Division Academic All-American of the Year, will come to Rice this fall to begin his graduate studies in computer science.

”I got into computer science to a large part due to my brother, who’s been at Rice for 10 years. Derek started a company along the way, so that slowed him down, but he’s one of those marathon Ricers.”

The California-born Ruths considers himself a Texan, having grown up in Sugar Land from fourth grade on, though his father’s career at Chevron mandated a stop in Indonesia first.

Like his brothers, one at Rice and another still at Washington University, Ruths is on the doctorate track. He’s especially glad to be here, as his girlfriend since high school is pursuing her own advanced degree at the University of Houston.

Obviously he’s no stranger to hard work. In fact, Ruths’ academic rigor probably kept him from pursing his undergraduate degree here in the first place. Rice was one of a number of Division I schools that pursued him for his basketball talents following his graduation from Stephen F. Austin High School in Sugar Land.

”But in the end, I was more interested in computer science than basketball, and I had to stay true to myself,” he said, likening Division I basketball to a job that would have left little time for academics.

Even so, he said his senior year was a test. ”It was especially difficult, because applying to graduate school takes a long time, and applying to 14 takes an especially long time. Luckily, by the time I got to my senior year, I was taking only 12 credits. I did a lot of front-loading.”

Ruths said he passed up opportunities to continue his basketball career as a pro in Europe to come home to Houston.

”There was just no better way to go out than the way it happened,” he said of his championship year. ”It’s like when you’re eating a meal, you want that last bite to be something good. That was the best bite I could imagine taking. It was a great time to hang ’em up and move on to the next step.

”It was time to grow up, to move on to the thing I was made to do.”