Emily Stroup

Classroom

Not only is Emily Stroup on track to graduate in May of 2020, but she’s on track to do it at nearly the top of her class while enjoying a stellar athletic career. Carrying a 3.92 overall GPA and a perfect 4.0 in her major of communication sciences and disorders (psychology minor), Stroup has been both a Chancellor’s Honor Roll and SEC Honor Roll member in each of her three seasons in Oxford. A National Society of Collegiate Scholars member, Stroup is also serving as an officer in the Ole Miss Hand Band, an on-campus choral group that uses sign language to perform concerts. Stroup is also a representative in the National Student Speech-Language-Hearing Association and has plans to become a certified speech pathologist after completing multiple speech pathology clinical experiences.

Character

Stroup has always found time to stop and chat with youth, posing for photos and signing pictures. In 2018, she was emailed by a family whose daughter said she wanted to be Emily Stroup for Career Day. The next home match, Stroup made sure to go up to the family and spend ample time with the daughter after the game. The young girl took home a signed mini volleyball and team poster, along with great memories.

Stroup is a two-year member of the Ole Miss Leadership team and three-year member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).

Community

Stroup has volunteered with numerous organizations both in Oxford and her hometown of Fargo, N.D., spending time at youth sport clinics such as the National Girls and Women in Sports Clinic, and she always spends a few minutes with the children on Sundays for post-game kids court. She has served as a volunteer for nursing home senior proms and as a nursery school playground attendant, has participated in Read Across America, and spends each summer working with the Special Olympics in Fargo. She has helped with freshman move-in, filled Thanksgiving baskets and participated in special campus-specific events such as Rebelthon (a 24-hour dance marathon to raise money for the Children’s Hospital of Mississippi) and The Big Event (the largest community service outreach in the state, through which hundreds of Ole Miss students go out on county-wide service projects). Stroup also served on the Hope to Dream committee, an organization that helps provide children in need with beds and mattresses.

Competition

When she graduates this spring, Stroup will leave Oxford as perhaps one of the best players in Ole Miss history. Originally recruited as a setter, the move to outside hitter has most paid off. She is a two-time AVCA All-South Region selection (2017, 2018), and she earned All-SEC honors in 2018 after breaking her own single-season kills record (584)—a statistic that ranked second in the country in 2017. Stroup also broke the single-match kills record on three separate occasions in 2018, tallying 30, 31 and 32 kills.

A U.S. National Collegiate Team tryout invitee, Stroup entered 2019 needing just 292 kills to become the all-time leader at Ole Miss and finished 2018 as one of the AVCA’s top 13 players not on a top 25 squad. She led the SEC in kills, points (639) and kills per set (4.70) in 2018, and she was the only player in the SEC to post at least 20 kills and 20 digs in the same match in 2018, which she did on back-to-back occasions. She finished second in the league in double-doubles in 2018 after leading for most of the season and has tallied more than 35 in her career, serving as a six-rotation player since her sophomore season.

In 2017 Stroup was named the NIVC MVP, leading the Rebels to their first postseason title in program history. She ranks in the top three in multiple statistical categories in the Ole Miss record book, and in the top 10 in another six.

(All stats as of nomination time.)