Nova Southeastern Athletics would like to recognize former men's basketball player Andy Platt as its December 2019 GEICO Alumni of the Month for December.

A 2001 graduate in Sports Management, the skills that Platt first learned as a student-athlete at NSU have brought him to leadership positions at several of the premier NCAA Division I athletic institutions across the south and to his current position as the Assistant Vice President of Oconee State Bank in Athens, Ga., where he is in charge of commercial lending.

Platt arrived in Fort Lauderdale originally intending to play soccer for former head coach Munga Eketebi, before a coaching change led him to walk on to Tony McAndrews' hoops squad. He had carved out a solid career as a role player during his first three seasons, before a breakout senior campaign that more than doubled his career totals in several statistical categories, etching his name all over the program's record book – including at the top of the list of the most three-pointers made in a season with 90, a record that he still holds to this day. A co-captain of that 2000-01 Knights team, Platt earned recognition as an All-Florida Sun Conference first teamer and All-American honorable mention, spending much of that season near the top of the NAIA's points leaderboard, finishing with an FSC-leading 592 points at a 21.1 per game clip, including a record-setting streak of 12 straight 20-point performances that has not been touched since.

A native of Ashland, Ohio, Platt began working in sports when he earned an internship with the Florida Marlins with the help of former Sharks Faculty Athletics Representative Nancy Olson – the team's Manager of Community Affairs at the time. During the summer before enrolling in classes as a freshman, Platt was along for the ride as the Marlins went on to defeat his hometown Cleveland Indians in a thrilling seven-game World Series for their first title in the franchise's young history. His father, Alan Platt, was a multi-sport coach-turned-athletics administrator and served as the Athletic Director of their hometown Ashland University, as well as Guilford College, West Chester University and Catholic University. The elder Platt was later instrumental in the formation of NSU's Sports Management program. After growing up around college athletics and participating as a student-athlete, it was only natural that his first job out of college was as a graduate assistant at upstart Florida Gulf Coast University as they first started their athletic department, then worked as the Eagles' first Sports Information Director, and by the end of his five years in Fort Myers, Platt was the Director of Internal Operations as the department was planning for their forthcoming transition to NCAA Division I status.

From there, Platt took his talents to Virginia for five years, first as the Assistant Athletic Director for Business Operations for the Richmond Spiders, then as the Director of Event Management at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The following six years were spent in the role of Senior Associate Athletic Director/Chief Financial Officer for both the Rice Owls in Houston and the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens, closing out 16 years in college athletics for his current job.

In addition to his athletic accolades, Platt was named the College Athletics Business Management Rookie of the Year in 2008 and served as President of the College Athletics Business Management Association from 2015-16.

"I was blessed to have an opportunity to be a student-athlete at NSU and am so thankful for the opportunity Coach McAndrews provided me," Platt said. "I have great memories of my time there and made life-long friends. Looking back, I would not trade that experience for anything. I took my experience as a student-athlete into being a college athletics administrator and always approached my job with a coach's and student-athlete's mentality to work hard and give it everything you had to help your team be successful."