Senior earns first-career Student-Athlete Sport Excellence Award in cross country
|
| Maura Ferrarini |
EASTON, Mass. (February 8, 2012) – Stonehill College senior Maura Ferrarini (Springfield, Mass./Cathedral) has been named the women's cross country Scholar-Athlete Sport Excellence Award winner by the Northeast-10 Conference (NE-10) for the fall 2011 athletic season, it was announced earlier today.
To be eligible for the Scholar-Athlete Sport Excellence award the student-athlete must have completed at least two consecutive semesters of full-time enrollment at their current institution and at least two years of athletic eligibility at any institution. In addition, the student-athlete must have a minimum cumulative grade point average of a 3.30. The NE-10 Scholar-Athlete Sport Excellence awards are chosen by a vote of a committee of athletic administrators and Faculty Athletic Representatives (FAR). The NE-10 honors one student-athlete per conference-sponsored sport each year. There will be a total of 23 Scholar-Athlete Sport Excellence Award winners during the course of the academic year.
Ferrarini, who collects her first-career Student-Athlete Sport Excellence award in cross country, shined in her senior season for the Skyhawks earning NCAA Division II All-East Region and All-Conference first team honors for the first time in her career while guiding Stonehill to its third-straight NE-10 championship, third-straight East Regionals title and 12th-straight trip to Nationals. Ferrarini also gathered NE-10 All-Academic honors in cross country for the second time in her career (sixth overall, including track and field), having earned a cumulative 3.77 GPA as a chemistry major at Stonehill.
A Capital One Academic All-District I honoree as a junior, Ferrarini posted a career-best time of 18:12.58 to finish third overall on the five-kilometer course at the NE-10 championships. Ferrarini followed up that performance with her second-straight career-best time of 23.12 at the NCAA Division II East Regionals. She has been a member of the NE-10 Commissioner's and Athletic Department Honor Rolls every semester in her four-year career and participated in the College's SURE program last summer. Ferrarini conducted her research on The Neural Arousal System, a project focused on the neuroanatomical circuits involved in switching between sleep and wakefulness.
Ferrarini has also excelled on the oval for the Skyhawks earning All-East Region and All-New England honors as a member of the indoor track and field team. Ferrarini currently holds one school record along with Kristen Veit (Easthampton, Mass./Holyoke Catholic), Susan O'Connell (East Greenwich, R.I./East Greenwhich) and Lindsey Booth (Franklin, Mass./Franklin) in the distance medley relay with a time of 12:17.17. Ferrarini posted a 5:10 mile split for Stonehill – a personal-best at the time – to anchor the team to a new school record.
A total of seven student-athletes, who excelled both on the field of play and in the classroom during the fall season, were recognized by the NE-10 in the sports of men's and women's cross country, field hockey, football, men's and women's soccer, and volleyball. Stonehill College was the only school with multiple winners as senior Stephen Polito (Worcester, Mass./Doherty Memorial) earned Scholar-Athlete Sport-Excellence honors for men's cross country.
Stonehill earned its second-straight Northeast-10 Conference Presidents' Cup Trophy for the 2010-11 academic year. In addition to capturing the NE-10 Presidents' Cup for the third time at the conclusion of the 2010-11 academic year, Stonehill ranked 51st in the final Learfield Sports Directors Cup standings which recognizes overall athletic achievement in NCAA sports. Stonehill was also recently ranked second in the National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA) Power Rankings used to assess the academic and athletic standards of all NCAA and NAIA athletic programs for the second-straight year. Stonehill has been recognized for its academic performance with regard to graduation rate by earning a 98-percent Academic Success Rating (ASR) for the second-straight year as released by the NCAA – ranking third in all of Division II.
- www.stonehillskyhawks.com -