Rural community colleges are the only institutions of higher education for huge swaths of the United States. Their role in their communities requires them to serve a variety of functions, from education provider, to economic development center, to a source of entertainment. Often this entertainment comes in the form of community college athletics. As rural community colleges make up 61% of community college athletics programs (Bush, et al., 2009; Casteñeda, et al., 2006), these changes can impact a large number of students and communities. Despite the importance of this facet of rural community colleges, little is known about their athletes. This quantitative study sought to provide information regarding this oft-ignored area of intercollegiate athletics and provide information regarding the students who participate in this endeavor and their engagement with their institutions through their educational mission. This study was designed to explore and compare the student engagement of rural community college student athletes to the student engagement benchmarks of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Determining if there was a predictive relationship, when controlling for background characteristics, between student athlete benchmark scores and self-reported GPA, was done through regression analysis. The results found that rural community college student athletes differ greatly from the general characteristics of rural community college students, and they are engaged in the campus at a high rate through almost all of the benchmarks. Race and academic preparedness greatly affected reported GPAs and all of the benchmarks were factors in predicting GPA, though not all positively.