Soccer Honored For Academic Work
December 01, 2009 | Soccer
Dec. 1, 2009
GREENVILLE, N.C. – The 2008 East Carolina women’s soccer team made history by claiming the program’s first-ever Conference USA regular season championship. The group also excelled in the classroom, posting a 3.18 grade-point average during the 2008-09 school year to earn the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) Team Academic Award. It is the Pirates’ sixth-straight year receiving the award.
The NSCAA honors any team with above a 3.0 GPA, with 467 squads (141 men, 326 women) among all NCAA divisions receiving recognition for last year’s academic performance.
East Carolina joined Colorado College, Marshall, Memphis, Rice, Southern Miss, Tulsa and UCF as C-USA women’s programs receiving the award.
“As a staff we are very proud of our team’s success in the classroom,” head coach Rob Donnenwirth said. “We see firsthand all the hard work and sacrifices that our student-athletes need to make in order to be successful on the field and in the classroom.”
Individually, last year’s team was academically led by Madison Keller and Nicole Moore, who were Conference USA All-Academic First Team selections. Keller went on to become a Second-Team NSCAA All-America Scholar while Moore was granted the Jim Castañeda Conference USA Postgraduate Scholarship Award after receiving the league’s women’s soccer scholar-athlete award.
This season got off to another strong start for the Pirates, as they had two more players earn league all-academic selections. Sophomore Amanda Malkiewicz was a first-team honoree and classmate Jessica Woodward made the second team. The two were the only sophomores to be named on either squad.
