Dunlavy is Stonehill's first Elite 24 Award winner
Northeast-10 Conference Elite 24 Award Winners
Dunlavy |
EASTON, Mass. (December 3, 2019) – Stonehill College volleyball senior Rachel Dunlavy was announced as the Northeast-10 Conference Elite 24 Award winner for volleyball this year.
Dunlavy is the first honoree from Stonehill to receive this award, in its second year of existence. The Elite 24 Award honors the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average (GPA) participating at the finals side at each NE10 Championship. These student-athletes represent the true essence of NE10 student-athletes earning it every day we are proud to recognize their efforts. The inaugural year for the Elite 24 Award was the 2018-19 season.
Dunlavy, who has earned a 3.98 cumulative grade point average while majoring in economics and minoring in data analytics and business administration has completed five of the six semesters with a 4.0. She has been named to the NE10 Commissioner's Honor Roll, Stonehill's Dean List, and the Athletic Director's Honor Roll her entire career thus far. She has also been invited to Stonehill Athletics' Academic Excellence Breakfast for the highest GPA on the team after the Fall 2017 and 2018 semesters. Dunlavy also earned the Division II Athletic Director's Association Academic Achievement Award her sophomore and junior years. She was inducted into Omicron Delta Epsilon and was given the St. Thomas Aquinas medal, Patron Saint of Students, for having the highest cumulative grade point average on the team. She received her third Fred C. Petti Individual Academic Award in as many years this fall, for having the highest GPA among Stonehill student-athletes.
The senior from Brighton, Michigan is just the second volleyball student-athlete in Stonehill history to earn Academic All-District® I First Team honors, as Pam Kelly '98 was the first honoree. This is Dunlavy's second recognition from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) as she earned it last year as a junior.
Assistant coach Danielle Aquino, Dunlavy, head coach Craig Martin, Assistant Coach Liz Pedro, and Senior Associate Director of Athletics Cindy MacDonald (from left to right) |
On the court, Dunlavy has started and appeared in all 27 matches this season. This season, Dunlavy reached the 1,000 career-dig milestone in a 3-0 victory over Saint Michael's College and she is now the 10th Skyhawk to reach this mark. As she wrapped up her career helping the team to its second NE10 Tournament appearance in four years, she has totaled 1,181 digs and sits seventh in program history. She ended the season seventh in the Conference with 4.52 digs per set.
This is the highest average in a season for a Skyhawk libero since Erin Kelly '13 averaged 4.50 in 2012.
Outside the classroom, Dunlavy has been a teacher's assistant at Harvard University for the economics department specifically assisting in micro and macroeconomics, serving in the same capacity at Stonehill since the fall of 2017. This past summer, she was an intern at Meridian Health Plan in the enterprise information management department in Detroit, Michigan. Dunlavy will graduate this December with a major in economics and minors in data analytics and business.
The Skyhawks received their first NCAA Division II East Region ranking since 2014, as they reached as high as sixth this season and just fell short of the program's third NCAA Tournament bid.
Stonehill ended the regular season third in the Conference and hosted Le Moyne College, the sixth seed for a 3-0 victory moving them to the semifinal round where the Skyhawks fell to American International College, the second seed, 3-1. Stonehill finished with a 17-10 overall record, its best since 2014, and a 9-4 NE10 mark.
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