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ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA Scholar-Athletes
Academic All-America and All-District honors for scholar-athletes
Virginia Wesleyan's list of ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA honors grew with two Academic All-Americans and a College-record nine Academic All- District III honorees in 2006-07.
Eric Caudill and Travis Cober were named to the prestigious ESPN The Magazine/CoSIDA Academic All-America Team. Caudill was named to the first team, and Cober was named to the third. Caudill, Mandy Nixon, Mark Banks, Tara Redding and Ashley Roane all received first team All-District III honors. It was the second consecutive year for Caudill and Banks to receive the academic accolades and a first for Nixon, Redding and Roane.
In the fall, Kelly Donnelly, women's soccer; Jen Perkinson, volleyball; and Travis Cober and Kyle Williams, men's soccer; also received ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District III honors.
All-District honorees, selected annually by the College Sports Information Directors of America, must have at least a 3.2 cumulative grade point average (GPA) on a 4.0 scale and be a significant contributor to his or her team.
Eric Caudill helped the Marlins tennis team to a 13-5 finish in 2007,
compiling a 26-3 record in singles and playing the No. 1 position in double
matches with partner Jeff Zenisek.
Caudill graduated magna cum laude with a 3.95 GPA in the Liberal Arts Management Program and will attend graduate school at the College of William & Mary. Caudill was Wesleyan's 2007 Senior Male Athlete of the Year, the Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the first Marlin to earn the Old Dominion Athletic Conference's Scholar-Athlete of the Year award in tennis.
Caudill was also the first male student-athlete at the College to receive a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. One of 58 honorees in all three NCAA divisions, he is only the second Marlin to receive the award.
Mark Banks, who graduated magna cum laude in criminal justice in December,
is the first Marlin runner to earn back-to-back first-team honors. A captain
in both cross country and track and field, Banks holds the program's 3K
record and ran a leg on the record 4x800 relay team. He ranked second among
Wesleyan's fastest runners in the indoor 5K, third in the outdoor 5K, and
placed in the Marlins' top five in all eight cross country races last fall.
Banks is an officer with the Virginia Beach Police Department.
Mandy Nixon, a starter on the softball team, is a religious studies major
and carries a 3.91 GPA. This season she ranked first in games played, runs
scored, triples and runs batted in and second in at bats, hits, doubles
and total bases. She set a College record in 2006 becoming the first Marlin
player to record 60+ hits in a season.
Tara Redding graduated summa cum laude in earth and environmental sciences
with a 3.9 GPA, highlighted by three straight 4.0 semesters. She was the
recipient of the 2007 Earth and Environmental Science Department Award.
She placed second on the Wesleyan team in five of seven cross country races,
and first in two, in 2005, before being plagued by an injury throughout
the 2006 campaign.
Ashley Roane, who competed in cross country and indoor and outdoor track
and field, did it all while balancing a double major in French and religious
studies. She finished the year with a 3.97 GPA and has posted a 4.0 in three
of the last four semesters.
The 2007 Forsyth Award winner, Roane holds a cross country record in the 6K and posted three of the program's top six times. She has also posted four of the program's top eight times in the 5K. In indoor track Roane is the Marlins' record holder in the 800-meter, 1,600, 3K and 5K races. Outside, Roane holds College records in the 800, 3K, 5K and 10K events, setting the fastest 10K time and second fastest 3K time in the ODAC this season.
Two Marlins sign with the Chicago Cubs
Matt Hudgins and Chris Rivera moved one step closer to playing major league baseball as each signed contracts with the Mesa Cubs (Ariz.), the rookie team for the Chicago Cubs.
Hudgins was named to the Rawlings/American Baseball Coaches Association's
(ABCA) All-America team as a second- team honoree – one of only four catchers
and one of 56 players overall to earn All-America status.He earned a .447
batting average this season, ranking first in the Old Dominion Athletic
Conference (ODAC) and sixth best in the 34-year history of Wesleyan's baseball
program.
Hudgins, the 2007 Player of the Year in the ODAC and a first-team All-South honoree, emerged last season as the Marlins' leader in runs scored, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, runs batted in, slugging percentage, walks and on base percentage. His 18 doubles tie the second highest total in College history, the 31 walks and 47 RBI tie the third highest total.
Hudgins exits Wesleyan's program ranked No. 3 in career home runs, No. 5 in putouts and tied at No. 7 in RBI. He finished with a solid .366 career batting average.
Also no stranger to lofty achievements, Rivera was the ODAC Pitcher of
the Year, a first for the highly successful Marlins program. Rivera compiled
an 8-0 mark, finishing as the only undefeated pitcher in the ODAC and recording
the best single-season record in College history.
Rivera led the league with 88.2 innings pitched, the fourth highest single-season total in Marlin history, and finished with a 2.44 earned run average. He started 14 games and made 17 total appearances, increasing his career total of appearances to 88, another College record.
This season he struck out 64 batters, increasing his career total to 197, the second highest in program history. He pitched 250.1 innings, the fourth highest total in Marlin history and closed out his career with a 21-5 record, making him only the fifth Wesleyan pitcher ever to record 20+ wins in a career. His .806 winning percentage is the third highest in program history.
A first in tennis with invitation to national tennis tourney
Seniors Eric Caudill and Jeff Zenisek became the first Marlin doubles team in program history to qualify for the NCAA's Division III national doubles championship in men's tennis.
The pair ranked No. 15 in the final national standings, third in the Atlantic South Region and compiled a 19-4 record in 2007. Winning the first set in their NCAA debut, the duo dropped the next two in an intense match.
The national appearance capped a series of firsts for the team, including an ODAC doubles championship in 2006. Caudill and Zenisek became Wesleyan's first doubles team to win a title at the No. 1 flight, snapping the 13-year winning streak of Washington and Lee University. The Marlin duo compiled a 20-1 record that season, becoming the first Marlin pair to record 20 victories in a season and helping Wesleyan to a 17-2 team record, the best in the program's 40-year history.
Caudill contributed to a 30-7 record in two seasons. Zenisek, a four-year member of the team, helped the Marlins to a 52-14 record, one of the best four-year marks in program history.
Zenisek finished his career ranked No. 1 among Wesleyan's all-time leaders in doubles wins, compiling a 45-5 record with various partners at the No. 1 spot. Zenisek was part of the top three No. 1 flight season records in College history. He also ranked No. 4 in singles wins, highlighted by a 21-10 record at No. 1.
Caudill finished the season ranked No. 43 nationally and 10th in the Atlantic South region. He produced 49 victories that ranked him No. 3 among Wesleyan's all-time leaders. He also ranked No. 3 in doubles, compiling a 41-5 record, with a 34-2 record at the No. 1 position, and complemented that with a 49-6 record in singles. Caudill was the first player in program history to record two 20+ win seasons.
Marlins place among nation's top 100 athletic programs for third straight year
National ranking highlighted by national championship appearances and winning streaks
Virginia Wesleyan continues to build its position as a veteran of success
in intercollegiate athletics, placing among the nation's older athletic
powers for the third consecutive year in the United States Sports Academy
Directors Cup competition.
Sponsored annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), the U. S. Sports Academy and USA TODAY, the Cup competition recognizes the best overall collegiate athletics programs in the nation. Wesleyan placed in the top 100 for the third year, tying for the 81st spot among 312 athletic programs ranked.
Colleges and universities are ranked according to point totals awarded for finishes in national championship competition. Wesleyan placed second in the men's basketball championship series and fourth in the women's soccer title tournament.
In addition to the Directors Cup, Wesleyan placed fourth out of 27 colleges and universities ranked in the 2007 All-Sports survey compiled by the Virginia Sports Information Directors. Marlin teams compiled a 192-103-7 combined record in the 2006-07 year for a 64.6 winning percentage.
Wesleyan's men's teams finished first in Virginia, posting a 69.9 winning
percentage this year with an 88-37-3 combined record to take the top spot
in the survey. In the past two years the Virginia Wesleyan men have put
together a combined 182-75-4 record. Women's teams also had a strong finish,
ranking eighth in the state with a 104- 66-4 record.
In 2006-07, 10 teams produced winning records and made four national championship competition appearances, as Marlin athletes competed for Division III titles in every season for the first time in the College's history.
Men's and women's soccer both advanced to the NCAA tournament in the fall, with the men moving to the second round and the women to the final four tournament. In the winter, men's basketball advanced to the Division III championship game for the second consecutive year; and in the spring, the men's tennis team was represented in the national doubles tournament.
Overall, the year produced two All-Americans, two Academic All-Americans, nine Academic All- District honorees, one ODAC scholar-athlete of the year honoree, eight all-region players, 54 all-conference honorees, three conference players of the year and three conference rookies of the year.
There were also 20 all-state honorees, two state players of the year, one state rookie of the year and two Virginia coaches of the year. Three teams finished ranked among the nation's top 25; men's basketball, No. 2; women's soccer, No. 4; and men's soccer, No. 25.
The Marlins' extended success is highlighted by some impressive winning streaks, topped by men's soccer, which has produced winning records for 22 consecutive seasons, one of the nation's longest winning streaks. Men's basketball has 13 consecutive winning campaigns, followed by baseball with 11, women's soccer with eight, women's tennis with seven and men's tennis with five. Field hockey is riding a four-year winning streak, as is volleyball, the latter entering only its fifth year of competition in 2007.
An era ends as Travis resigns as athletics director and soccer coach at Virginia Wesleyan
Wesleyan's head men's soccer coach since 1989 and the athletics director
for the past eight years, Sonny Travis left the College in August to coach
Emory University's men's soccer team.
One of the leading Division III coaches, Travis entered the 2006 season ranked No. 17 among the nation's winningest active coaches with a 74.1 winning percentage and No. 22 in total victories. He is also ranked No. 14 among Division III's all-time most successful coaches with a career record of 294-92-37, including a 270-74-31 mark at Virginia Wesleyan.
Travis, only the eighth head coach in Wesleyan's 38-year-old men's soccer program, guided Marlin teams to nine first place, regular-season finishes in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) and eight league tournament titles. Thirteen teams that qualified for NCAA competition advanced to regional finals six times.
“It was a very, very tough decision for me,” said Travis. “I am going to miss my players, the relationships that I have established at Virginia Wesleyan as well as the soccer community in Hampton Roads that I have known for the past 18 years.”
During his time as athletics director, Marlin teams won more than 61 percent of their competitions and placed among the top three teams in the ODAC in various sports 43 times.
Wesleyan has increasingly garnered national attention in athletics, highlighted by the Division III men's basketball championship in 2006 and the runner-up finish in 2007. The women's soccer team advanced to the final four tournament in 2007, and Travis' men's soccer team qualified for the NCAA tournament for a College-record 13th time.
“In many ways Sonny has been the architect of an athletics program that has come to be recognized year-in and year-out as one of the top Division III programs in the country,” said President Billy Greer.
Following Travis' departure, his longtime assistant Mike McFarland '96 was promoted to head coach. McFarland, a standout player under Travis, is the program's only three-time All-American, the 1992 Division III Player of the Year, a four-time All-South honoree and a former professional soccer player.
Associate Athletics Director Joanne Renn has been named interim director of athletics for the 2007-08 season.
Sports in Review: Spring 2007
MEN'S TENNIS
(13-5 overall, 7-2 ODAC, third place regular season and tournament)
Seniors Eric Caudill and Jeff Zenisek became Wesleyan's first doubles team to qualify for the NCAA Division III championship tournament. They finished ranked No. 15 nationally, with a 19-4 record. Zenisek ranks No. 1 among Wesleyan's all-time leaders in doubles wins, while Caudill is No. 3. Caudill is also No. 3 in career singles victories, while Zenisek is No. 4.
ODAC HONORS: (Singles) Caudill, Zenisek, first team; Steven Wright, second team; Tommy Popomaronis, honorable mention: (Doubles) Caudill, Zenisek, Wright, Devin Crosby, first team
ODAC SCHOLAR ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Caudill ALL-VIRGINIA: Caudill, first team; Zenisek, second team
VIRGINIA ACADEMIC ALL-STATE: Caudill
ESPN THE MAGAZINE/COSIDA ACADEMIC ALL-DISTRICT 3: Caudill, first team
ESPN THE MAGAZINE/COSIDA ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICA: Caudill, first team
WOMEN'S TENNIS
(18-2 overall, 9-1 ODAC, second place regular season and tournament)
Rookie Imee Bautista became the first Marlin women's tennis player to record 20+ seasons in singles and doubles with a 26-6 record in singles and a 27-3 mark in doubles with sophomore Megan Crook. Wesleyan finished as runner-up in the ODAC tournament for the first time in program history. Senior Lisa Fanney also recorded a 20-win season in singles. Fanney and senior Caroline Place ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in singles and doubles victories. Junior Keira McMillan set a program record with 15 consecutive singles victories.
ODAC HONORS: (Singles) McMillan, Place, Sabo, second team; (Doubles) Bautista, Crook, Fanney, Place, McMillan, Sabo, second team
ODAC ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Bautista
ALL-VIRGINIA: Bautista, first team; McMillan, Crook, second team
VIRGINIA COLLEGE DIVISION ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Bautista
BASEBALL
(23-17 overall, 13-5 ODAC, first place regular season, tied fourth place tournament)
Matt Hudgins led the Marlins and the league with a .447 batting average. He connected for 63 hits, the seventh highest total in College history and led the team and league in numerous statistical categories. Chris Rivera emerged as the only undefeated pitcher in the league, compiling an 8-0 record, setting a new program standard. He produced 197 strikeouts in his career, the second highest total in College history, and he made 88 career appearances, another program record.
ODAC HONORS: Hudgins, Rivera, Ricky Allred, Ozz Dhramapitaksook, first team; Brandon Hathaway, honorable mention
ODAC PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Hudgins
ODAC PITCHER OF THE YEAR: Rivera ALL-VIRGINIA: Hudgins, Rivera, first team; Allred, Dharamapitaksook, C.J. Rhodes, second team ALL-SOUTH: Hudgins, first team; Rivera, second team
ALL-AMERICA: Hudgins, third team
GOLF
(Seventh in the ODAC tournament)
Rookie Trae Kresinske carded a teamleading 76.7 average through nine rounds of competition. He recorded a season-low 70 during the second round of league championship competition, tying the third-lowest 18-hole score in program history.
ODAC HONORS: Kreskinske, honorable mention
MEN'S LACROSSE
(10-5 overall, 2-4 ODAC, fifth place) J
Juniors Brett Morris and Jordan Kenney led scoring for the second consecutive year as the Marlins tied the program record for victories. Morris ranked No. 7 nationally in goals scored per game, and Kenney ranked No. 13. Junior Maicin Dunk ranked No. 19 nationally in assists, junior Drew Smythers ranked No. 24 in face-off win percentage and junior goalie Tom Skartsiaris ranked No. 11 in saves percentage. Marlins led the nation with most goals scored in a game (33 vs. Hood College) and in man-up offense (scoring 47.5% of the time). They ranked No. 4 nationally in man-down defense, No. 11 in goals scored per game, No. 13 in scoring margin and No. 24 in face-off win percentage. Four Marlins received All-ODAC honors, tying the highest number of honors in program history.
ODAC HONORS: Morris, Todd Evans, first team; Mike Canino, second team; Drew Langis, honorable mention
ALL-VIRGINIA: Morris, Evans, first team; Kenney, Canino, second team
WOMEN'S LACROSSE
(7-10 overall, 5-3 ODAC, fourth place regular season, fifth place tournament)
Junior Jillian Boyd led the Marlins with a career-high 51 goals, the sixth woman in program history to score 50+ goals in a season. She is ranked among Wesleyan's all-time leaders in goals, assists, points, shots, ground balls, draw control wins and caused turnovers. Sophomore KC Marchwicki was the second-leading scorer with a career-high 27 goals, also ranking second in shots, ground balls and caused turnovers.
ODAC HONORS: Boyd, first team; Marchwicki, Bethany Adomanis, Aimee Sraver, Laura Norris, honorable mention
ALL-VIRGINIA: Boyd, first team; Marchwicki, second team
ALL-SOUTH: Boyd, second team
VIRGINIA ACADEMIC ALL-STATE: Julie Maggioncalda
SOFTBALL
(11-26 overall, 7-11 ODAC, seventh place regular season)
Junior Bree Strain led the Marlins with a .373 batting average and 12 doubles. Juniors Mandy Nixon and Allison Cockrell helped team-leading totals of 28 RBI and four home runs, respectively. ODAC HONORS: Strain, honorable mention
VIRGINIA ACADEMIC ALL-STATE: Nixon
ESPN THE MAGAZINE/COSIDA ACADEMIC ALL-DISTRICT 3: Nixon, first team
OUTDOOR TRACK AND FIELD
(Men and women both finished sixth in the ODAC championship meet)
Rookie Jason Taylor competed in seven events at the league title meet, posting program records in the 200-meter dash and with the 4x100-meter relay team (including junior Chris Park, sophomore Bryan Hutcheson and rookie Kory Moody). Rookie Cathryn Wilson set a program record for the women in the 400-meter and was part of the 4x400 and 4x100 relay teams that scored points for the Marlins. Sophomore Ashley Ladyman placed fourth in the discus and sixth in the shot put.
VIRGINIA ACADEMIC ALL-STATE: Ashley Roane