The New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference

Babson Park, Mass.-The New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) announced today that 38 NEWMAC student-athletes, including 28 on the women's side, were honored by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) as Scholar Athletes. In addition, five conference tennis programs were named ITA All-Academic Teams. The five teams to receive this distinction were the MIT men's and women's teams, as well as the Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley programs.

The men's Scholar-Athletes included Ryan Castonia (Whitehall, Mich.), Jonathan Farm (Honolulu, Hawaii), David Iba (Lexington, Mass.), Vinith Misra (Freemont, Calif.), Peden Nichols (Great Falls, Va.), Michael Price (Gaithersburg, Md.) and Ken Van Tilburg (Kapellen, BELGIUM) from MIT, along with Chapman Beekman (South Kingstown, R.I.), Kyle Hudgins (Uxbridge, Mass.) and Eric Pelletier (Bangor, Maine) from Wheaton.

Among the NEWMAC women honored were Sheena Bhalla (Port St. Lucie, Fla.), Leslie Hansen (Fairfax, Va.), Sonya Makhni (Fort Pierce, Fla.), Emily Onufer (Virginia Beach, Va.), Karina Pikhart (Granada Hills, Calif.) and Yi Wang (Woodinville, Wash.) of MIT. Mount Holyoke had a conference-high ten recipients; they were Ariadne Cantlin (Woodstock, Va.), Elisa Frankel (Cornwall on Hudson, N.Y.), Janine Gresko (Highland Mills, N.Y.), Natalie Hsiang (Pittsford, N.Y.), Helena Jedziniak (Columbia, S.C.), Catherine Knight (Hopkinton, Mass.), Sarah London (Mount Pleasant, S.C.), Elise Marifian (Belleville, Ill.), Meaghan Sloane (Concord, Mass.) and Elizabeth Tighe (East Longmeadow, Mass.). Vida Chen (San Jose, Calif.), Alanna Dick (Winthrop, Maine), Seiko Fujii (Aichi, JAPAN), Allyson Hawkins (Plainfield, N.H.) and Catherine Hill-Lydecker (Conway, N.H.) from Smith, Jane Booth-Tobin (Minneapolis, Minn.), Nathalie Herman (San Francisco, Calif.), Jenny Kendall (Auburn, Maine), Jenna Mezin (Haiku, Hawaii), Shivani Saxena (Milan, ITALY) and Jennifer Schwartzkopf (Hinsdale, Ill.) of Wellesley, and Wheaton senior Maya Milic-Strkalj (Philadelphia, Pa.) also represented the conference.

In order to earn ITA Scholar-Athlete status a student-athlete must be a varsity letter recipient, have a grade point average of at least 3.50 for the current academic year and have been enrolled at his or her institution for at least two semesters. To qualify as All-Academic teams, a program must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.20.

For more information and a complete list of winners visit http://itatennis.com/.

NEWMAC Student-Athletes, Teams Honored by ITA