They want to retire Liz Kitley's jersey ... classify something she's done as a "national award." (I'm not Liz-bashing, by the way -- she absolutely deserves to have her jersey retired.) They don't want to retire the jersey of (insert athlete's name here) ... whatever he or she has done is not a "national award." Ya'll are overthinking this. The real reason that a "national award" was added to the criteria -- in my opinion -- came about because Ace Custis's jersey was retired in March of 1997, as a nod and a thank-you to Bill Foster. Odd decision. We all love Ace, but he's not jersey-retirement material. He leads in the VT record book for exactly one statistics: Consecutive games played (123). That led to a lot of "what about"-ism concerning more accomplished players from the past, with the lead example being Allan Bristow. Bristow is #1 in career scoring average (23.1 ppg) -- a VERY impressive statistic -- and consecutive double-figure games (78). To quiet the mob, Bristow's jersey was retired in 1998, 25 years after his playing career ended. The Ace Custis thing really created a problem, because there are MANY more accomplished athletes across many sports whose jerseys never got retired. So in 2002, to add at least a little structure to it, they put in the criteria of a "national award," and that provides a convenient way to rule out future Ace Custises and not make that mistake again.