University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Named AHCA All-American Scholars
9/26/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Hockey
MINNEAPOLIS - Seven Golden Gophers are among the individuals honored as AHCA All-American Scholars, the American Hockey Coaches Association (AHCA) announced Tuesday.
Sydney Baldwin, Dani Cameranesi, Nicole Schammel, Kate Schipper, Lee Stecklein, Taylor Williamson, and Alex Woken are among the 220 Division I-II women recognized by the AHCA for academic excellence in 2016-17.
The AHCA has developed this new initiative to recognizes varsity ice hockey players that averaged a 3.6 GPA and participated in 40 percent of their school's games during the 2016-17 season.
In the first year of this program in 2016-17, a total of 1,229 athletes reached this standard. A small number of waivers to the 40 percent participation requirement was granted due to injury or for back-up goaltenders.
"I want to give credit to Mark Ostapina, head men's coach at Milwaukee School of Engineering and Mare MacDougall Bari, assistant women's coach at St. Lawrence University, for spearheading the successful launch of this initiative," said AHCA executive director Joe Bertagna. "We have been recognizing on-ice excellence with our All American program since 1957. It is long overdue for us to formally recognize excellence in the classroom."
Along with collecting seven AHCA All-American Scholar awards, Minnesota received nine WCHA Scholar Athlete awards, seven Big Ten Distinguished Scholar awards, and 17 WCHA All-Academic Team honors last season.
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