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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Tennis Falcons Named an ITA All-Academic Team for 2009-10
August 21, 2010 | Women's Tennis
Chiricosta, Easdale, Eccleston earn individual honors from ITA
The Bowling Green State University tennis team was well represented as the Intercollegiate Tennis Association announced its academic awards for the 2009-10 academic year. BGSU has been named a 2010 ITA All-Academic Team, and three Falcons have been named ITA Scholar Athletes.
Christine Chiricosta, Jessica Easdale and Maddy Eccleston all earned the individual Scholar Athlete awards for the Falcons of head coach Penny Dean. Chiricosta was a junior, Easdale a sophomore and Eccleston a freshman on the '09-10 squad.
Each of the aforementioned Falcons has been named an ITA Scholar Athlete in every year of their respective collegiate careers. Chiricosta earns the honor for the third time, Easdale for the second-straight year and Eccleston for the first time as a collegian.
Additionally, incoming transfer Mary Hill also was named to the list. Hill joins the BGSU program for the 2010-11 academic year after spending the '09-10 season at Coastal Carolina University. CCU also was named an ITA All-Academic Team.
The ITA, the governing body of collegiate tennis, bestows its academic awards on deserving teams and student-athletes for men and women at all collegiate levels - NCAA Divisions I, II, III, NAIA and junior colleges. The ITA All-Academic Team award is open to any ITA program that has a cumulative team grade point average of 3.20 or above (on a 4.00 scale). All eligible student-athletes whose names appear on the NCAA/NAIA/NJCAA/CA JUCO eligibility form and competed in one or more varsity matches must average into the GPA for the current academic year (including fall 2009 and spring 2010).
In order to earn ITA Scholar-Athlete status, a player must meet the following criteria
- be a varsity letterwinner,
- have a grade point average of at least 3.50 (on a 4.00 scale) for the current academic year, and
- have been enrolled at their present school for at least 2 semesters (including freshman through senior year).
Chiricosta, a native of Avon Lake, Ohio (Avon Lake HS), is a two-time Academic All-American, having been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Second Team in 2010 after earning third-team honors in '09. Chiricosta is the first-ever BGSU women's tennis player to be named an Academic All-American by CoSIDA. She also was named BGSU's Junior Scholar-Athlete of the Year for 2009-10, earning an award that is given to just one male and one female student-athlete in the junior class at BGSU.
On the court, Chiricosta was an All-MAC First-Team selection in 2010, after being named to the second team in each of her first two seasons. She had an overall record of 43-18 last year, tying for the 10th-most wins in a season in school history, despite playing at the top singles and doubles flights for the entire season. For her career, Chiricosta has 128 combined wins, tying her for 12th in school history. She has 64 singles wins (tied for 14th on the BGSU list) and 64 doubles victories (ranking her 12th on that chart), and is within striking distance of the school records in all three categories.
In the classroom, Chiricosta maintains a perfect 4.00 cumulative grade-point average through three years at BGSU, as an adolescent/young adult/secondary education major.
Easdale, a native of Dublin, Ohio (Dublin Jerome HS), stepped into the BGSU lineup as a sophomore, after missing nearly all of the 2008-09 season due to injury. She had an overall record of 29-17 in 2009-10, going 17-10 in singles and 12-7 in doubles play. Easdale played at the fourth singles flight for the bulk of the MAC schedule, and moved into the doubles lineup for the last half of MAC regular-season play along with the conference championships. Easdale played only four total matches, all exhibition singles contests, in her first season at BGSU.
In the classroom, Easdale has a 3.71 GPA as a neuroscience major.
Eccleston, who hails from Toledo, Ohio (St. Ursula Acad.), finished second on the team in wins in her first year on campus. She posted an overall record of 40-21, including a 22-8 doubles mark. Eccleston led the team in doubles victories, and her 22-win total tied for 10th on that BGSU single-season list. She teamed with Chiricosta at the top doubles flight for the entire spring, and that duo went 6-2 in MAC regular-season play. In singles, Eccleston had an 18-13 record on the year. Her total of 40 overall wins tied her for 15th on that school seasonal list.
Eccleston, a health science major, has a 3.84 cumulative GPA through one year at BGSU.
The ITA honors are just the latest academic accolades for the Falcons. In June, as mentioned, Chiricosta was named an ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American for the second-straight spring. The previous month, the team earned an NCAA Public Recognition Award, given to teams scoring in the top 10 percent in each sport with their Academic Progress Rates, for the fourth consecutive season.
The 2010-11 edition of the Falcons will begin competition with the BGSU Invitational in mid-September.
