Tiger Women Swimming And Diving Earn CSCAA Academic Award

Springfield, Ohio — Not only did the Wittenberg University's women's swimming and diving team do a fine job in the pool during the 2009-10 season, finishing fourth in the challenging North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) championship meet last month as six swimmers met or exceeded NCAA Division III provisional qualifying standards, the Tigers put up strong numbers in the classroom as well.

Wittenberg was one of 90 NCAA Division III women's swimming and diving teams to post a cumulative team grade point average of 3.0 or better to earn a spot on the College Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) Team Academic All-American list. The Tigers ranked 50th on the list with a 3.29 team GPA for the fall 2009 semester.

The Tigers also stood 50th in 2008-09, although the GPA rose from 3.23 to 3.29. The Tigers have won the award, which honors men's and women's swimming and diving teams that display excellence in the classroom, each of the last four years.

"It takes a great deal of self-discipline to succeed as a collegiate student-athlete," said Wittenberg Head Coach Natalie Koukis, who has earned two North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Coach of the Year awards in her five seasons at the helm of the program. "It says a lot about the quality of the young women in our program that they consistently reach a high level of achievement both in the pool and in the classroom."

The Tigers finished the 2009-10 dual meet season, which included head-to-head battles with some of the top teams in the nation, including Kenyon, Denison and DePauw, with a deceiving 6-6 record. While the .500 finish broke a string of five straight winning dual meet records, the Tigers competed more than half of the season without senior All-American Adeline Brym, class of 2010 from Mansfield, Ohio, as she pursued studies away from Wittenberg's campus during the fall semester.