U-M: Pioneer’s Alice Hill and Adam Shibley Named Michigan’s Big Ten Medal of Honor Recipients
From Michigan Athletics
ANN ARBOR — The University of Michigan Athletic Department announced Thursday (June 17) that seniors Alice Hill (cross-country and track and field) and Adam Shibley (football) were named its 2021 Big Ten Medal of Honor recipients.
The Big Ten Medal of Honor is awarded to one male and one female student from the graduating class of each member institution who has demonstrated excellence on and off the field throughout their college career. The highest honor that a student competing in conference athletics can achieve in the Big Ten, the award was established in 1915 and was the first award in intercollegiate athletics to demonstrate support for the educational emphasis placed on athletics. During the past century, the Big Ten Medal of Honor has been awarded to more than 1,300 honorees. These individuals have translated their campus experience into success in all walks of life.
Hill is the department’s female recipient, the 11th from the women’s track and field and cross country programs and the first since Erin Finn in 2018. A graduate of Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Hill is a three-time All-American in the indoor distance medley relay, an NCAA Championships qualifier in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and a competing member of multiple NCAA Cross Country Championships rosters.
At the conference level, she is a Big Ten champion as a member of the DMR and has scored individually five times between the indoor mile and outdoor steeplechase. She was a member of the school-record distance medley relay team that also recorded the fastest time in Big Ten indoor history.
In addition to donning the maize and blue for Michigan, she wore the Red, White and Blue for Team USA in a seventh-place finish in the 2018 IAAF World U20 Championships steeplechase final.
Her achievements on the track are matched with a sterling record of excellence in her studies. She graduated this spring as a James B. Angell Scholar with a 4.00 cumulative grade-point average and dual majors of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. A member of the university honors program, she participated in and conducted numerous research projects during her undergraduate career. She also was among the select few juniors invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Hill joined the Spencer-Segal Lab in the Michigan Neuroscience Institute during her sophomore year, and remained in the lab through the completion of her senior honors thesis and graduation. Her research in the lab focused on how hormones within the brain affect the development of such neuropsychiatric disorders as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was selected for an Honors Summer Fellowship last summer to pursue her senior thesis project — “Corticosterone enhances formation of neutral but not fear memory during infectious illness” — that eventually earned Highest Honors and won a Director’s Award from the Undergraduate Program in Biology.
Hill’s work was published in the journal Endocrinology and presented at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society’s national annual meeting.
Shibley is the department’s male recipient. He is the 40th recipient of the award from the football program, and the first since Jake Butt in 2017. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Shibley is a three-year letterwinner who appeared in 18 games during his U-M career with one start at linebacker. He contributed on special teams throughout his career and played significant snaps at linebacker as a senior, when he had his best statistical season with a career-high 23 tackles in six games, including three tackles for loss.
Shibley was a semifinalist for the Jason Witten Collegiate Man of the Year Award last fall, awarded annually to the college football player who has demonstrated a record of leadership. He is a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree and graduated from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts with a degree in communications and media. Shibley also is active as a member of the Big Ten Anti-Racism and Anti-Hate Coalition, formed in summer 2020, and the community service chair of the Lebanese Student Association. Shibley is pursuing his graduate degree from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
Off the field, Shibley is the founder of The Uniform Funding Foundation (TUFF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to decrease participation costs for youth sports teams and athletes who come from low-income areas by providing customized gear, uniforms and equipment. In addition to providing uniforms, TUFF provides mentorship and motivation for young men and women in low-income areas through relationship-building, ‘TUFF Talks’ and involvement from its notable list of supporters.
To date, TUFF has provided uniforms for and worked with 33 youth programs in Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Mich.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Richmond, Va., and in Liberia, Africa. The group has provided soft shell helmets to 17 high schools in the state of Ohio as well. TUFF has enlisted the help and donations of 11 current NFL players, including eight former Wolverines. Other contributors who have donated or adopted a team to support include: NFL journalist Adam Schefter and other media members, Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey, Colts defensive end Kwity Paye, and a host of NFL pros, former MLB slugger Prince Fielder and others. Additionally, TUFF has raised more than $180,000 through additional donations and is under contract with Adidas as its uniform and apparel provider through 2024.
