NAMPA, Idaho – Peruse the Northwest Nazarene athletic rosters from the last decade or so and you'll notice something unique.

The same names on multiple rosters.

In college athletics, especially at the NCAA Division II level, playing multiple sports is rare.

At NNU, though, it is accepted and even encouraged to a point.

"I think we are attracted to these kinds of kids because they are well rounded typically," NNU women's basketball coach Steve Steele said. "They are typically good students because they are good at organizing their time. We like athletic kids who have the athleticism to be high-level track athletes and basketball athletes."

While NNU has featured dual-sport athletes involving track and field and baseball, soccer, volleyball and men's and women's basketball, it has been the women's hoops program that has seen the most crossover.

Graduate student Ellie Logan is the latest in a long line of successful basketball and track and field athletes. She will compete in the NCAA Division II National Outdoor Track and Field Championships in the javelin for a second consecutive year at 10:30 a.m. MDT on Saturday in Kingsville, Texas.

Logan wrapped up a stellar basketball career with a trip to the second round of the national tournament in March, finishing as the sixth all-time leading scorer in school history.

"A lot of schools want you to specialize," Logan said. "Between women's basketball and track, that is something that sets NNU apart. They can get really good athletes by giving them that option."

Logan was recruited by a few Division I schools for track and field, but she was adamant that she wanted to do both sports in college and NNU was the only one that gave her that option.

Then-head coach John Spatz had been providing athletes the chance to do two sports for a number of years and he helped bring Logan to Nampa.

"I always believed that every good athlete was a track athlete," Spatz said. "I still feel that it's important enough to give them every opportunity and for the sport of track to be there for them if they decide to do just one sport. For a number of (NNU's dual-sport athletes), it became a life-changing decision that went well beyond sports."

Spatz worked with then-women's basketball head coach Kelli Lindley to recruit athletes for both sports. With tight budgets, the dual sport kids could get scholarship money from both programs. So, while they weren't necessarily recruiting kids to do both, it made sense financially.

"If we could offer them a track scholarship and a basketball scholarship, we could sign some pretty talented athletes," said Lindley, now NNU's athletic director. "The style of play that we had, lent itself to recruiting athletic kids who could run fast and jump high."

Those kids included Danielle (Pridgen) Dwello, Lindsay Brady, Nicki Schutte and Falissa Smith.

In 2008, Brady won the GNAC outdoor title in the 400 meters and was on the winning 4x100 relay and 4x400 relay with Schutte, who also won the 100 meters title.

"If I was a dual sport athlete coming out of high school and I had a passion for both and I could be successful in both and get a good education, I think that is a big selling point for NNU," track and field coach Danny Bowman said.

In more recent years, Kate Cryderman played basketball and was a thrower for the track and field team. Logan and Lexi Tubbs came into college at the same time, doing both sports. Redshirt freshman McKenna Emerson is doing cross country, track and field and basketball and incoming freshman Emma Clark is doing track and field and basketball.

"I played four sports in high school and a varsity sport and a club sport in college," Steele said. "I'm a fan of letting kids do what they want. Basketball makes them better track athletes and track makes them better basketball athletes."

Doing two sports requires coaches and athletes to work together to make practice time and competition schedules work.

For example, in 2017 Tubbs played a regular-season basketball game on a Thursday at Western Oregon, flew back to Nampa and won the 60-meter hurdles title and set the school record Saturday at the GNAC Indoor Championships and then flew back to Portland to play Concordia that night.

"The track coaches have been great to work with," Steele said. "During basketball season they fit track in where they can and during track season they fit basketball in where they can."

For Logan and Tubbs, they often didn't practice much for track and field, but the style of play that Steele runs in basketball helped keep them in shape for their other sport.

"The majority of the time, I didn't practice – indoor especially," Tubbs said. "I would go to practice maybe once the week before I would compete. It was kind of a running joke on the track team that I didn't practice, but I did well."

While NNU has found success in letting students do multiple sports, it continues to be rare at other schools. Part of that is because coaches don't want to share athletes because of injury concerns and partly because we live in an age of sports specialization.

A quick survey of other GNAC schools showed that only MSU Billings, Seattle Pacific and Simon Fraser have had a basketball/track crossover athlete and then it was extremely rare.

"Culturally at NNU we really value balance and the development of the whole person," Lindley said. "Our coaches are more apt to give their student-athletes a break from their sport and they see value in that."