July 23, 2018
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. â€" The Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association has announced its Academic Honor Squads and Academic Honor Roll, with Penn State head coach Missy Doherty's squad earning recognition as a team, as well as seeing eight student-athletes honored for the work the program did in the classroom.
Overall, the Nittany Lions posted a 3.38 during the spring semester and compiled a team cumulative GPA of 3.4 in 2017-18. Twenty-nine women's lacrosse student-athletes posted a 3.0 GPA or better, with 13 earning a spot on the Dean's List.
The IWLCA honored 429 student-athletes from 98 different institutions on the Academic Honor Roll and 96 Division I programs earned Academic Honor Squad distinction. To be eligible for this honor roll, student-athletes must be a junior, senior, or graduate student and have earned a cumulative academic GPA of 3.50 or greater. To qualify for the honor squad, the program must have posted a 3.0 or higher team GPA for the academic year.
The eight Nittany Lions to earn the honor from the IWLCA include; junior Kayla Brisolari (supply chain management), senior Bridget Chakey (secondary education), senior Madison Day (biobehavioral health), junior Katie Garvey (supply chain management), junior Lucy Haubold (health policy administration/statistics and business), junior Delaney Muldoon (psychology), senior Katie O'Donnell (advertising and public relations) and senior Shelby Wells (kinesiology).
Among the teams with student-athletes honored, Penn State's eight honorees ranked tied for No. 4 nationally and were tied atop Big Ten institutions. Yale led all programs with 10 honorees, Brown and Mercer each tallied nine, while Penn State joined eight other universities with eight student-athletes recognized, including Big Ten programs Maryland and Northwestern.
Six of the eight student-athletes honored by the IWLCA also earned Big Ten Distinguished Scholar recognition, which honors student-athletes that owned a 3.7 GPA or higher for the academic year. That total is the second-most honorees by the women's lacrosse program, just behind the nine honorees from 2017. Maggie Gallagher and Kristin Roberto joined Brisolari, Chakey, Day, Haumbold, Muldoon and O'Donnell on the B1G list.
Along with the success in the classroom, the Nittany Lions made their seventh-straight NCAA Tournament appearance in 2018 and have appeared in two of the last three NCAA Final Fours.