Chiricosta Named to Academic All-District First Team for Third-Straight Spring

Bowling Green State University tennis standout Christine Chiricosta has been named to the 2011 Capital One Academic All-District® Women's At-Large Team, it was announced Thursday (May 19). Chiricosta was named to the first team for the third consecutive year.

Complete Capital One Academic All-District® At-Large Teams

As an academic all-district first-team pick, Chiricosta is now eligible for the Capital One Academic All-America® Team. Her name will be placed on the national ballot. Last year, she went on to be named an Academic All-American for the second time in as many years, being chosen to the second team after earning third-team honors as a sophomore.

Chiricosta, a native of Avon Lake, Ohio (Avon Lake HS), is quite possibly the most decorated player in BGSU tennis history. She finished her career holding all three school records for wins. Chiricosta had a total of 178 combined career victories, with 89 singles and 89 doubles wins. In the 2010-11 campaign, she was named to the All-Mid-American Conference First Team for the second-straight season, after earning all-conference second-team honors in each of her first two years at BGSU.

In the 2010-11 campaign, Chiricosta had an overall mark of 50-20, having played at the number-one flight in both singles and doubles. That 50-win total tied her for fifth place on the BGSU single-season wins list. The team co-captain had identical marks of 25-10 in both singles and doubles on the season. Her singles win total was fifth on the BG single-season list, and the doubles win total deadlocked her for fifth on that school chart.

Chiricosta has amassed a veritable plethora of hardware off the court as well as on. Earlier this spring, she earned the BGSU Department of Athletics Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is the highest award given by the athletics department, and is given to one male and one female who encompass everything that a BGSU student-athlete should be. One year earlier, she had been named BGSU's Junior Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Chiricosta has been named to the Academic All-MAC Team in each of her first two years of eligibility for the honor, and was selected as a ITA Scholar Athlete in each of her first three seasons at BGSU. Those awards have not yet been announced for 2010-11.

On the court, in addition to earning All-MAC First-Team honors, Chiricosta shared the conference's Leann Grimes Davidge Sportsmanship Award. That award, which is the result of voting by the MAC women's tennis student-athletes, is presented to the player or players who displayed outstanding sportsmanship in MAC competition. Chiricosta was named the MAC's Scholar-Athlete of the Week twice in her senior year and five times in her Falcon career.

Chiricosta, the lone player in program history to earn academic All-America honors even once, helped BGSU to a total of 55 dual-match wins during her career, tying the school record for a four-year span. She became the school's career leader in overall individual wins on Jan. 30, 2011, picking up a come-from-behind singles win at Butler. Then, on Feb. 27 at Detroit, she picked up her record-breaking singles win. Chiricosta snapped the BGSU career doubles wins record on April 2, teaming up with sophomore Maddy Eccleston for a victory against Ball State.

Chiricosta's academic all-district award in 2009 had made her the first Falcon tennis student-athlete so honored in six years (since Alyson Gabel in 2003), and she now has earned that honor in each of the last three seasons.

In the classroom, Chiricosta maintained a perfect 4.00 cumulative grade-point average as an adolescent/young adult/secondary education major.

The Capital One Academic All-District® Team is the result of voting by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) members within District 4. The district consists of schools in the states of Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. To qualify for nomination, a student-athlete must be a starter or important reserve with legitimate athletic credentials and a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.30 (on a 4.0 scale). Additionally, she must have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing (true freshmen, redshirt freshmen and ineligible athletic transfers are not eligible) and must have completed at least one full academic year at the institution.

The at-large team hopefuls consisted of district student-athletes in the women's sports of bowling, crew, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming, tennis and water polo.

Chiricosta's name, as mentioned, will now be placed on the Capital One Academic All-America® Team ballot, where first- second- and third-team All-America honorees will be selected later this month.

The tennis Falcons concluded the 2010-11 season with 15 wins, just one shy of the school record, and finished three spots higher than predicted in the MAC standings. BGSU finished the campaign with a dual-match record of 15-8 and a MAC ledger of 5-3. The Falcons, picked to place seventh in the MAC in the preseason coaches poll, actually finished fourth before advancing to the semifinal round of the MAC Championships.

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