Four Lakers Named CSC Academic All-District

CHICAGO – Roosevelt's softball program placed four student-athletes on the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District team, the organization announced Tuesday.

For just the third time this season, the Lakers also had a player qualify for the Academic All-American ballot in senior Samantha Norman. In addition to Norman, fifth-year senior Kate Sisson earned Academic All-District honors along with junior infielders Brynn Dvoracek and Isabella Walton.

Norman has a strong case for Academic All-America honors after being a first-team All-Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference selection this season. The Shorewood native threw a career-high 131 1/3 innings and finished with 128 strikeouts, two shy of the single-season record. Her 2.08 ERA was the third-best in the conference and none of the other eight pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched allowed fewer hits than Norman.

Sisson has been named to the All-CCAC squads multiple times in her career and is a four-time NAIA Scholar-Athlete. This season, she averaged 5.5 strikeouts per seven innings to bring her program record to 392 punchouts in her career. Dvoracek batted .304 batting with a team-best 35 hits and .461 slugging percentage while also contributing 18 RBIs from her spot at first base. Walton drove in seven runs and had a pair of doubles as the Lakers' regular designated player.

The Academic All-America program is the longest running and premier award for athletic and academic success across championship college sports in all three NCAA divisions, the NAIA, two-year colleges and Canadian institutions. It was established in 1952 and the honorees are nominated by CSC members then All-American honors are voted on by the membership as well.

In order to be named to the Academic All-District teams, a student-athlete must not only hold at least a 3.5 grade point average, but also must have either appeared in 90 percent of the team's games this season. The list of all-district honorees is then vetted by the CSC committee, who send out a ballot for All-American honors to the membership.