As more than 4,000 graduates prepare to take the stage at the Viking Pavilion, we’re highlighting a few of the students who make the PSU community so special. You may recognize these faces from their athletic careers as Vikings, but they are much more than the numbers on their jerseys.
For Isaac Brice and Emma Stolte, some of the most important growth came during the seasons they couldn’t compete at all and what they did with that time says everything about who they are. Here is a look at who they are off the field, what they’ve accomplished in the classroom and where they're heading next.
Isaac Brice, Men's Basketball
Isaac Brice will tell you he's just a southern boy from Picayune, Mississippi. He'll say, “yes ma'am” to everyone he meets, strike up a conversation with a stranger in the hallway and mean it when he asks how you're doing. That warmth isn't something he learned at Portland State, he brought it with him, but Portland State is where it found its purpose.
Brice came to PSU by way of Southwest Mississippi Community College and Iona University, arriving in Portland with a connection to the city already in place — his dad coached football at PSU in 2007 and 2008. When he entered the transfer portal, Portland State was the first program to reach out. While Portland was familiar, what he found when he got to PSU was something he hadn't experienced before.
"Coming from a place where people didn't care as much — I was a basketball player. I wasn't Isaac. I was just a player on the team," he says. "And here, I'm Isaac Brice."
What had seemed like manageable shoulder pain turned out to be a labrum tear, and what followed was not one surgery but three, including a nerve transfer procedure. For the entirety of last season, while his teammates won the Big Sky regular season championship, Brice watched from the sideline.
He did not go quiet. Instead he became the loudest voice on the bench, hyping up his fellow teammates and becoming a mentor and a leader for the younger guys on his team in the way you only can when you know exactly what it feels like to need someone to believe in you.
"I can't give my effort on the basketball court," he says. "So I have to double my effort on trying to be loud, trying to make sure everybody's awake and ready to go."
That same instinct carried him into PSU's Team Impact program, where he was paired with Lucas, a young man with special needs who became something closer to family than a program participant. He threw Lucas a signing day ceremony, attended his eighth grade graduation and plans to be at his Special Olympics track meet. When PSU won the championship and Lucas was in the stands, Brice joked with Lucas’ mom that they'd only lost the two home games he hadn't attended.
"It just feels like what I'm supposed to do," he says. "I'm so blessed to be in this position. I don't see why I can't share that with him."
Brice is graduating with a B.A. in marketing marketing degree and heading into a master's program in Applied Data Science at PSU, steadily building toward a career he hopes will one day land him at Nike. He has a fifth year of eligibility ahead, a shoulder finally showing signs of recovery and a season he has been waiting to play. But before any of that, there is a stage to walk across to receive his diploma and knowing Brice, he'll find a way to make everyone around him feel like it's their moment too.
Emma Stolte — Cross Country and Track & Field
Emma Stolte grew up in a town of about 1,900 people in Montana, in the same school building from kindergarten until senior year, knowing everyone everywhere she went. She loved her small town, and at the same time, she was also ready to explore something new. When she told people she was heading to Portland State, some of them looked at her like she'd said something strange (moving to a big city), but she had already made up her mind.
She came to PSU to run. But she would eventually understand she also came to learn how to fail.
Her first lesson in failure arrived in her second year in the form of three stress fractures — found on an MRI the week before a conference meet in Montana on the very course where she'd raced her senior year of high school. Her parents were coming, her high school coach was coming, her friends were coming and it was supposed to be a full-circle moment. Instead she spent six months in the pool and on the bike, cross-training her way back to a sport she could no longer run. A teammate named Abdi, who had been running for years, sat with her during that stretch and offered something that sounds simple but landed exactly right: “Emma, running is supposed to be fun.” It was just the reminder she needed.
"It felt like my identity was stripped," she says. "But I never gave up."
When Stolte came back, something had shifted — not just in how she trained but in how she approached everything. She runs fewer miles per week than almost anyone in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), compensating with hours in the cold tub and a belief, built alongside her coach, that she was capable of more than she'd shown. Perhaps most importantly, she found joy in running again.
This season she broke three school records — the 800m, the 1500m and the 5k — and after crossing the line in the 800m, she recalls walking to the stands and stopping there with her hands on her head, staring at the scoreboard and waiting for it to feel real.
"It felt like hard work had paid off," she says. "Like all of it had led to that moment."
That same tenacity showed up in the classroom too, where she maintained a 4.0 GPA on a pre-medical track approaching every hard stretch the same way she approaches a long race. She works at the Center for Student Health and Counseling (SHAC), where she found a community that has meant as much to her as the track itself. She also helped initiate “Run with President Cudd” and when a shin issue kept her from participating on the day itself, she rallied her injured teammates and walked the waterfront cheering as everyone else ran past.
Medical school is next, with a goal of eventually practicing in a rural area and serving communities like the one she came from. “Hopefully,” she says, “one day I’ll return to PSU as a medical provider at SHAC”— the place where she solidified her love for community and medicine.
For Brice and Stolte their hardest seasons came when they couldn't compete at all, and they spent that time becoming exactly the kind of people Portland State is proud to send out into the world.
Read part two of our outstanding student athlete series, featuring soccer and track standout Ocean Rideout and softball's Allison Harris.