Astrid Ter Avest is living proof of that old cliché about life being what happens while you make other plans. Growing up, the military was one of the furthest possible career paths from her mind. The only daughter of a single father, Astrid grew up a notorious tomboy with a serious interest in Pyramid. She seemed to be well suited for the court; possessed of a strong arm and an indomitably competitive spirit, she was identified as a potential standout, and several professional teams were scouting her even before she'd graduated high school.
By and large, Ter Avest impressed; she obviously had a great degree of natural talent, though a few scouts took note of her almost excessive competitiveness and her proclivity for racking up fouls and penalties. Their bosses shrugged this off, though, chalking it up to youthful exuberance, and the consensus was she would definitely be a first round draft pick upon graduation from college. She did nothing to dissuade such thoughts; dreams of fame and Pyramid glory were dancing through the young woman's head.
Upon graduation from high school, Astrid was offered and accepted a full ride to the academically prestigious Kobol Colleges, who wished to put their athletic programs on the map, as well. She decided to major in electrical engineering with a minor in chemistry. While she was far from the best student, she kept her grades high enough to stay on the pyramid squad, which rapidly started climbing the ladder in the Gemenon Conference.
That is, until the now-infamous 'Delphi Game'.
During Ter Avest's years at the Kobol Colleges, Delphi was one of the noted powerhouse teams of college Pyramid. The match between them and the resurgent KC team was highly anticipated, and did not disappoint. Both teams were playing all out, and the score was going back and forth when the incident occurred. One of the Delphi defenders, Petra Bryant, had already had several run-ins with Astrid on the court, including an illegal trip maneuver to spoil one of Astrid's shots that had not been called a penalty. Finally, several plays later, Astrid retaliated. As the ball was being put back into play, Bryant was closely guarding Ter Avest, who abruptly grabbed a handful of Bryant's hair and yanked the other girl's head down into her waiting kneecap. Bryant collapsed in a heap, Astrid's horrific assault knocking her briefly unconscious. For weeks, the image of a flushed, furious Astrid standing over a prone Bryant made its rounds in the sports pages.
The fallout from the incident was swift. Astrid's scholarship was revoked, and only a long debate as to what to do about her status as a student allowed her to finish the semester's classes. Finally, however, the decision came down; she was informed that she would not be welcomed back to KC the following semester, and they wished her luck continuing her education elsewhere, blah blah blah. That effectively put an end to not only her Pyramid career but her collegiate as well; no other school would offer her a scholarship, the professional teams wouldn't touch her, and her father had been forced by an out-of-court settlement to use his financial reserves to pay for Petra's medical bills. In effect, Astrid had been effectively blackballed.
With a half-completed engineering degree the only thing on her resume other than her Pyramid skills, it was a challenge to find gainful employment. She found a job as a waitress in a diner on Gemenon, but was fired after a year for making several offensive remarks to obese patrons regarding their menu choices. Having no references, no real skills, and a list of black marks on both her school and work records as long as her arm, she turned to the one place that was a refuge to outcasts and pariahs everywhere: the Colonial Fleet. She cruised through enlisted basic training, thanks to her prior Pyramid training, and after some initial bumps in the road, she displayed a surprising ability to take orders. The Fleet gave her structure, a purpose, and even some semblance of discipline, though the old Astrid was always there, lurking under the surface.
In one of the Fleet's rare instances of sticking a round peg into a round hole, Astrid found herself assigned to engineering training after her graduation from basic. Trained specifically as an electrical engineering technician, she managed to do surprisingly well for herself in the service; already familiar with the theory of engineering, she displayed a certain aptitude for putting that theory into practice, and rose to the rank of PO2 within four years on the strength of her job performance and her increasing ability to restrain her more destructive impulses. Her first assignment was the missle frigate Pentelikon, though she recently found herself transferred to the new Battlestar Cerberus, her first ever battlestar assignment.
