2018 Rhodes Scholarship Winners

Portions of this story courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications and Yale Sports Publicity

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Three Ivy League athletes received 2018 Rhodes Scholarships, the most elite award and scholarship for international study.
 
Former Yale men’s basketball player J.T. Flowers and Harvard senior men’s tennis player Xavier Gonzalez were the only student-athletes among the 32 American students selected as 2018 Rhodes Scholars, while Crimson men’s squash senior Mandela Patrick was named the 2018 Commonwealth Caribbean Rhodes Scholar.
 
It marks the 45^th time multiple Ivy athletes were named Rhodes Scholars in the same year in League history, and the most since three received the scholarship in 2011. Flowers, Gonzalez and Patrick are the 158^th, 159^th and 160^th all-time Ivies to earn the prestigious honor and the first since Penn women’s rower Jenna Hebert in 2016.
 
Gonzalez, a mathematics concentrator, plans to pursue a Master of Science by research in mathematics at Oxford. At Harvard, he is a four-year varsity tennis player with a 4.0 GPA, is a peer advising fellow and a volunteer at a homeless shelter. On the tennis team, he holds an all-time 15-4 singles record thus far in his career.
 
Flowers, who played for Yale in 2013-14, is a 2017 graduate with a B.A. in political science. A Truman Scholar, Flowers' thesis examined policy gaps in Portland, Oregon's sanctuary city policy for undocumented immigrants. During his stay at Yale, Flowers devoted his time to A Leg Even, an organization that facilitates the academic and professional endeavors of low income students. A first-generation college graduate, Flowers helped to design and implement major changes to Yale's financial aid system.
 
Patrick, a four-year varsity squash player with a 3.748 grade point average, was awarded the scholarship out of the nine candidates from the Caribbean. He went 4-3 in 2016-17, including a 3-0 sweep at No. 8 in the Crimson’s match against Brown. Starting in October of 2018, Patrick will spend two years completing master's degrees in computer science and statistics.
 
Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England and may allow funding in some instances for four years. The scholarships were created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, British philanthropist and African colonial pioneer, and are provided in partnership with the Second Century Founders, John McCall MacBain O.C. and The Atlantic Philanthropies, and many other generous benefactors.
 
The first class of American Rhodes Scholars entered Oxford in 1904; those elected today will enter Oxford in October 2018.