Billy Hart '02 is a regular fixture in the sports section of The Bates Student, as both a subject and a writer.

A three-year starter for the men's basketball team, Hart was the 1999 Maine Basketball Coaches Association Rookie of the Year. That season, he was the first Bobcat rookie to lead the team in scoring since 1995. In 2000-01, he was an integral part of the longest winning streak in the school history and became just the sixth man ever at Bates to score 1,000 points as a junior.

When he's not playing his own sport, the Haverhill, Mass., native, is usually involved in someone else's, either writing his regular column for The Student or announcing Bates football for WRBC-FM, 91.5. Hart parlayed that experience into a pair of summer 2000 opportunities  — an internship behind the scenes at CNN/Sports Illustrated in Atlanta, and a column in The Haverhill Gazette about his experience down South. During summer 2001, he published several short pieces in Boston Magazine, where he interned with the editorial department.

Hart believes that such opportunities would not have come about at another school. "It is so easy to get involved here," Hart says. "I have been able to do things I would never have considered before. It has helped me decide what I want to do with my life."

Hart, a political science-education double major, is also a two-time Academic All-Conference selection in the competitive New England Small College Athletic Conference. "Bates has a real community atmosphere," Hart adds. "Professors and coaches take a vested interest in you as a person and go out of their way to see that you have an opportunity to succeed."