Open Announce

Women's Tennis Earns Several ITA Academic Awards

by Frank Mercogliano

TEMPE, Ariz. — The University of New Mexico women’s tennis team picked up several ITA academic honors, including being an ITA All-Academic Team.

In addition, all eight scholarship student-athletes were named ITA Scholar-Athletes.  Yue Lin “Polly” Chen, Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang, Hsuan Huang, Myu Kagayama, Sara Kuuttila-Webbert, Natasha Munday, Danielle Quevedo and Satoho Toriumi were all honored.  They helped UNM to a 3.91 spring semester GPA after turning in a 4.03 in the fall, the best semester by any athletic team in the history of UNM Athletics.

Additionally, the triumvirate of Chen, Munday and Hsuan Huang were also named All-Mountain West, with Chen earned the nod in singles and Munday and Huang in doubles.

The academic success has become the norm for the program, but even moreso under head coach Vicky Maes.  In her four semesters officially leading the program, the team has turned in grade point averages of 3.98, 3.99, 4.03 and 3.91.  Those are the four highest GPAs in Lobo women’s tennis history.  The next highest GPA is a 3.79 in the fall of 2009, when most of the players on the current team were in elementary school.

“I can’t say enough about how our student-athletes approach their classroom studies,” said Maes. “We have terrific professors and academic staff, and our student-athletes are as dedicated to excelling in the classroom as they are on the courts.”