INDIANAPOLIS – Former Bethel University men's track and field student-athlete Karl Olsen was awarded the prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarship as announced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.  The scholarship, which Bethel has received 13 times in total and 11 times over the last 13 years, awards Olsen $10,000 to apply towards a postgraduate degree.

"The scholarships are awarded to student-athletes that excel academically and athletically and who are in their final year of college athletics," stated the NCAA. "The postgraduate scholarship was created to promote and encourage postgraduate education by rewarding the Association's most accomplished student-athletes through their participation in NCAA championship and/or emerging sports."

During his time at Bethel, Olsen put his name in the record books where he holds indoor records for the 200m, 400m, 4x200m relay and 4x400m relay. For the outdoor season he holds records in the 200m, 4x400m relay and sprint medley relay. The recognition recognized Olsen's indoor track and field accomplishments where he was a three-time All-American after finishing as the national runner-up in the 400m during the 2018 indoor national meet in Birmingham, Ala. He is also a two-time All-Central Region member in the 200m and 4x400m relay on top of being All-Region for the 400m in 2018. At the MIAC Indoor Championship meet, Olsen was a three-time champion in the 4x400m relay and back-to-back champion in the 200m, 4x200m relay in 2017 and 2018.

In the classroom he was a two-time indoor USTFCCCA Academic All-American amassing a 3.83 GPA as an Applied Physics and Mathematics major at Bethel. He also earned Google Cloud/CoSIDA Academic All-American honors in 2018 after being named to the Academic All-District team. On top of all that he was three-time MIAC Academic All-Conference selection and made eight consecutive appearances on the Dean's List.  

Olsen takes his analytical skills to his next step in the Masters of Analytics program at Georgia Tech.