One of the most rewarding things about this "job" (I watch young adults chase a ball and describe what I see, so job may be a stronger term than is necessary) is the things I learn through the student-athletes. A lot of these young people are incredibly smart and incredibly driven and quite frankly, operating on a higher intellectual level than you or me. Take the Google rabbit hole that 15 minutes talking about Kristen Stucker's summer led me down:

KESMARC

Poultice

Horse saltwater spa

American Saddlebred horses

Mule prosthetics

Hagyard Equine Institute

It would be easy to coast on the laurels of being a 4.0 student, Academic All-American and two-time Ohio Valley Conference Setter of the Year—that's a pretty full résumé for anyone. Instead, Stucker hoofed it—you'll see in a minute why that's clever—for not one but two internships over the summer, working with rescue horses in New York during June and some of the finest horses in the country in Lexington in July.

Hoofed it? Horses? Never mind.

As a high schooler, Stucker juggled volleyball and riding in competitions. One memorable weekend, she competed at the Iowa Falls Classic on Friday, lifted her high school team to a 5-1 record at a volleyball tournament on Saturday, won the pleasure equitation championship that Saturday night and was runner-up in the Iowa Equitation competition the following day.

She did that sort of thing routinely, while carrying a high-school GPA north of 4.0 as well. It's not as though her love of horses waned during the last three-plus years in Clarksville, where she set about being the greatest setter the school—perhaps the league—has ever seen; rather, there was simply no longer enough time in the day.

However, you take a mind as sharp as Stucker's, couple it with a lifelong love of all things equine, add in her trademark determination to do everything full-tilt and voila, you've got all the makings of one of the nation's finest up-and-coming vets.

"Originally, I was thinking about working with small animals," she said. "The last four years, being away from home, made me realize how lucky I was to be around all the animals (when I was growing up). I had never spent a week of my life not around a horse. And I don't even live on a farm; we keep our horses someplace else, but I would always go and ride three or four times a week. It's such a big part of my life. Anyone on my team will tell you, I love horses; I could talk about them for hours at a time.

"As I've gone deeper into school, my interest has deepened. I really like biology, medicine, science. It ties into being a vet, because I don't just love animals, I love the medicine side of it as well."

Stop No. 1 over the summer was Little Brook Farm in New York. One of the nation's oldest horse rescue and sanctuaries exposed Stucker to some of the starkest realities of animal cruelty—ignorance, neglect, complete abandonment. For someone whose love for animals runs deep, the experience has stayed with her.

"There actually was a neglect case for a mule, a four-year old who had basically been put out in a field to fend for himself," she said. "No veterinary care, no human handling. His front legs were severely deformed; to look at a picture, you'd think there was no possible way he could be alive. He was skin and bones, in a field with 25 other horses and he could barely get around. And it was incredible, four years old and had no human contact or only bad experiences with people, and yet by the third or fourth day he was nickering at us to bring him food.

"We sent x-rays to the top vet schools and there was just no way to fix the deformities. If he'd had any vet care when he was younger, they would've been able to fix it, but even prosthetics and crazy surgeries wouldn't have done anything for him. He didn't even realize he was in pain, because he'd never known any differently; the only reason we knew was because his heart rate was twice what it was supposed to be. Physiologically, he was experiencing extreme pain and it was all he'd known because people just didn't care for him. It was heartbreaking."

Little Brook is a labor of love. There are no paid employees. To work there involves 12-hour days, every day, and sometimes taking work home with you—somehow, Stucker wound up fostering rescued cats in her apartment. The animals may not have experience with people, or their limited experience may be that of abuse.

But the challenges also give way to moments offering opportunities to enact great, profound change. During Stucker's brief time in Old Chatham, the farm hosted a law enforcement clinic to learn how to identify and handle horses in abuse, neglect and seizure cases. She was able to champion for animal cruelty and horse slaughter laws at the state capital, bringing a miniature horse right into the building. She was able to make a difference.

It's not to say she didn't make a difference in July at KESMARC, the Kentucky Equine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center—it was just a different kind of difference. It's the place where the top thoroughbreds and show jumpers go to rehab; in her capacity helping these standouts of the animal kingdom, Stucker put them through their paces in a facility equipped with an underwater treadmill, pool, vibration platform, saltwater spa—the same things any elite athlete on two legs would use to bounce back from injury.

"We had to check every single horse, take their temperature, check their legs, make sure there were no cuts or swelling, because these are million-dollar horses and we were in charge of making sure everything is fine," she said. "At the end of the day, we learned to bandage different things—poultice to draw out swelling, different wraps to protect their legs because every injury is a little different."

After her experience in New York, Stucker knew that getting these animals back into top shape was paramount; unfortunately, not every owner has the best of intentions for a horse that has outlived its usefulness.

"The performance side is not all bad by any means, but it's hard to think about the horses that were rehabbing from injury and that if they don't rehab, they might just get discarded," she said. "(In New York) we had a horse that sold for $330,000 as a two-year old, as a thoroughbred. Made some money on the track, had some babies, but couldn't get pregnant anymore and was basically thrown away, neglected and was just a couple of days from death when they rescued her. One of the points they want to make is that there is nothing wrong with these rescue horses, they just wind up in a bad situation."

These experiences have helped shape Stucker, no different than her time at Austin Peay. In the spring, she'll head off to Hagyard Equine Institute, one of the nation's best and oldest equine veterinary practices. That's after the conclusion of her senior volleyball campaign, one that can cement her legacy in Austin Peay and OVC lore and leave her as one of the shining examples of the term student-athlete. She's her generations answer to Reed Harper, Breigh Jones, Carrie Burggraf—names that have done so much on and off the field of competition that they transcended the notion of what a student-athlete at Austin Peay can be.

For what she's done in Clarksville, Stucker maintains that her experiences are already paying dividends for her future.

"When you're applying to vet schools, being a student-athlete is a huge plus," she said. "When I find myself interviewing, I find the experiences I've had as a student-athlete and the ways I've grown are the answer for everything. Being a student-athlete is not easy, and I feel like I've grown so much over the last four years but also helped prepare me for vet school and the future. All those experiences—working with a team, pushing myself, dealing with disappointment or failure, hard work—I don't know how I would've been prepared for those questions if I hadn't been a student-athlete."