Boelk competes in Olympic swimming trials University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point swimmer Randy Boelk will try to make the Olympic team this weekend at the U.S. Olympic trials in Indianapolis, Ind. Boelk, an Embarrass, Minn. native, left for Indianapolis Tuesday to compete in the 100-meter backstroke. He qualified for the trials after swimming a time of :49.99 last season. Preliminary races were held Thursday at 10 a.m. and semifinals were at 7 p.m. The finals will take place later in the week, with the top two finishers advancing to Sydney, Australia summer games in September. Boelk, whose brother Al is the UW-SP head coach, has been training at the UW-SP pool every morning in preparation for the trials. Randy, who will be back with the Pointers for his senior season, is an 18-time NCAA Division 3 All-American. As a freshman, he won the national title in the 200 backstroke and was second in his sophomore and junior seasons. He also was a member of UW-SP's 400 medley relay team, winning national championships in 1998 and 1999. Terry Porter was the last UW-SP athlete to tryout for the Olympics. Porter attended the tryouts for the 1984 Olympic men's basketball team but didn't survive the final cutdown. Wrestler Dennis Hall was a graduate student at UW-SP when he won a silver medal in 1996. * * * SCHOLARSHIP WINNER: UW-SP swimmer Becca Uphoff has been named a recipient of a NCAA postgraduate scholarship, marking the second Pointer athlete to earn the honor this season and the second straight year a UW-SP swimmer has won the award. Uphoff, who recently graduated with a degree in communicative disorders, joined UW-SP football player Andy Palzkill as two of the 174 scholarship recipients among all NCAA institutions during the 1999-00 school year. UW-SP swimmer John Stevens earned the honor following the 1998-99 season. The award is worth $5,000 toward continuing education. Uphoff plans to pursue a master's degree in speech and language pathology. Uphoff, a Madison West High School graduate, posted a 3.83 grade-point average and was a third-team GTE Academic All-American. She was a two-time National Swimming Coaches Association Academic All-American and a four-time member of the WIAC Scholastic Honor Roll. In the 1998-99 academic year, Uphoff won the Outstanding Junior of the Year Award in the Department of Communicative Disorders and the UW-SP Scholar-Athlete Award. She became a four-time WIAC champion last season in the 200 freestyle and 200 backstroke, while also winning her third straight 500 freestyle title as the Pointers won their first-ever WIAC title. Uphoff also won three WIAC relay titles last year and became a five-time All-American by finishing sixth in the 200 freestyle relay and seventh in the 800 freestyle relay. * * * FRANK A FIRST-TEAMER: UW-SP men's basketball player Gabe Frank has been selected to the first-team Jewish All-American College Division team by the Jewish Sports Review. Frank was the only non-east coast player selected to the first team. He joined Yosef Gev of Yeshiva University (N.Y.), Erik Litman of Norwich University (Vt.), Eyel Lieb of Massachusetts-Lowell and Scott Wallach of Trinity University (Ct.). Frank, a Northbrook, Ill. native, averaged 11.7 points per game and shot 85.1 percent from the free-throw line while earning first-team All-WIAC honors. He also shot 45.1 percent from three-point range and started all 30 games for the WIAC champion Pointers, who finished 22-5 overall. * * * WOMEN'S SOCCER RANKED: Following its 17-4 season in 1999, the UW-SP women's soccer team is ranked 16th in the National Soccer Coaches Association preseason rankings. The Pointers finished last season ranked 19th in the country after qualifying for the NCAA Division 3 playoffs for the sixth time in seven seasons. UW-SP will play three of the top 11 teams in the poll, including a home match with third-ranked Wheaton (Ill.) on Sept. 19. The Pointers also play at eight-ranked Macalester (Minn.) on Sept. 16 and at 11th ranked Trinity (Texas) on Sept. 3. The Pointers open their season Sept. 1 at Southwestern (Texas).