Brittney Covington can almost—almost—remember the worst grade she ever received.

"I might have gotten a C at one point in time in my life," she said. "I think it was in middle school math."

Forgive her if the memory is a little hazy. For one thing, it's been a while since middle school. And for another, Covington probably had to jettison that memory for something important, in her capacity as a double-majoring (English and Biology, if you were wondering), 4.0-GPA-carrying standout student-athlete at Austin Peay.

Covington didn't expect to bear that mantle. It just… happened.

"I never expected—ever—that I would have a 4.0 GPA in college," she said. "That was crazy to me. I didn't hope for it, because I didn't think it was attainable. My high school teachers would be so surprised—I don't think I went one year with straight A's in high school. My kindergarten teacher didn't want to let me go to the first grade; they said I wasn't prepared to move on.

"That just shows, you don't have to listen to what other people say and you can achieve what you want to if you work hard enough."

Hard work essentially sums up how Covington got to this point. Athletically, the local product from Clarksville Academy was a doubles dynamo during her prep days, placing runner-up in the state doubles championship in 2009. Academically, she was good bordering on great—a 3.89 high school GPA is nothing to sneeze at, after all.

Then she moved up the street to Austin Peay and hit a whole other level.

"I've gone so long without getting a B… every semester, as I get closer to graduating, I want to attain the perfect GPA," Covington said. "If I'm this close and make a B, it would just be horrible. But that's my personality anyway—I want to do the best I can in school and in tennis too."

That sounds like a tough way to live, and it probably is for the standard student—or student-athlete, as the case may be. Pressures increase in college, be they academically, socially and, for the fortunate, athletically.

The balancing act can be tricky—it doesn't leave a ton of time for a social life.

"Sometimes I wish I could spend a little more time with my friends, but the drive to do well in school and tennis always kind of overwhelms that," Covington said. "Being an athlete, I've learned a lot of self-discipline; if I have a temptation to put things off, I've learned how to power through that."

The culture of the women's tennis program likely helps that. Always lurking near the top of the semester GPA list, the women's tennis team almost seems downright competitive in the classroom—a competition Covington believes will carry over to the court this season.

"I think there's a deep tournament run in this group," Covington said. "Last year, we didn't do as well as expected—we had a really good fall, but then in the spring we dealt with injuries and sickness and we ddin't do what we expected.

"This year, we have a stronger team with more depth—there were times last season where we were playing with five players and there's a lot more stress with that. If you're already down a point, you're down one of the doubles matches—it puts a lot of pressure on you."

Covington can provide a nice blueprint for navigating those pitfalls. If you're a new student-athlete, you'd be well-advised to take the following to heart, via Covington:

• "Know yourself. Understand how you learn the best. Some people don't know as well how to study for an exam—some people learn better with sample questions, some people draw diagrams. I write definitions and words over and over again—that's what helps me learn.
• "Also persistence. You can't give up; there's so many times in school and in life in general that you don't want to finish, when you're tired, and you have to keep pushing yourself to achieve things.
• "College can be difficult if you don't have background of studying. I've seen people whose high school curriculum wasn't as hard and they didn't understand how they needed to study and it took them awhile to figure it out. Learn how to study."

A question we often ask around here is: how can you sum up the ultimate student-athlete experience?

Team success is important, sure. Individual success is a plus. A strong academic background, of course, as well as a rich, fulfilling history of service, would go a long way. Develop some lifelong friendships and hey presto, perfect student-athlete experience. Athletics director Ryan Ivey often trumpets the same mantra: a degree in one hand, a ring on the other.

There are two ways to pull this off: become a superhero (unlikely) or develop the grit, determination, time-management, teamwork and drive necessary to elevate themselves to new heights.

Brittney Covington won't cop to being a superhero, so the rest of that definition must be true.