MOSCOW, Idaho – Kayode Rufai and Laura Spataro have earned Vandals of the Week. Both were outstanding in the spring and are looking to finish up their undergraduate degrees at the University of Idaho this year.
 
Rufai, now in his second year with the Vandal football team, recently changed up his major to finance and will graduate in December. Spataro is in her fourth season with Idaho tennis and will be completing her undergraduate degree in exercise science in the spring.
 
"When I got here I was a marketing major, had a lot of passion for marketing," said Rufai. "But I took a summer finance course with Derek Nalle, a professor here, and ever since then I've just been involved with the finance program and last spring I decided to change my major. It's been great. I just personally thing it's something everyone should know; how to deal with money and make it work for you."
 
"I chose exercise science because I'm really passionate about sports in general," Spataro said. "I'm interested in health and I realized I wanted to be a personal trainer. I'm passionate about sports and working with athletes."
 
Rufai and Spataro made the most of the changes in the spring and both got perfect 4.0 grade-point averages, something that Spataro has done in each of her semesters at the U of I.
 
"For me it's all about adapting. It's just finding a new schedule because everyone has classes at different times and it's being delivered differently," Rufai said. "Being understanding of yourself, because it's not something that you're used to, and of your teachers because it's new for them as well. That's how I got by, personally. And being home is always good. You're around family so when you're not doing school or football you're actually with your family. That's always a positive thing."
 
"At first it was kind of confusing, everything that was going on, because we were really in the middle of the season and about to leave for spring break," said Spataro. "The first couple of weeks after that was just realizing what was going on. Then I just tried to stay focused on school, although everything online was a little harder. It felt like we stopped with everything but school was still going. I just took it one step at a time and tried to keep up with the work and I was able to finish from Italy."
 
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