July 29, 2013
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Penn State women's ice hockey team had 15 members of its inaugural varsity squad named to the 2012-13 College Hockey America All-Academic Team on Monday. The 15 honorees were the second-most in the CHA behind Robert Morris (21).
For the Nittany Lions, three honorees from May's Academic All-Big Ten release were also included on Friday's list. Graduated senior Kate Christoffersen (Trumbull, Conn.), graduate student Lindsay Reihl (Cheshire, Conn.) and rising junior Tess Weaver (Windber, Pa.) garnered recognition on both lists. Rising senior Jenna Welch (Austin, Texas) was PSU's fourth upperclassman to earn academic distinction from the CHA.
Eleven first-year students were named by the CHA to the All-Academic Team: Jeanette Bateman (Greeley, Colo.), Hannah Hoenshell (Plano, Texas), Jill Holdcroft (Pennsylvania Furnace, Pa.), Paige Jahnke (Roseville, Minn.), Darby Kern (Venetia, Pa.), Emily Laurenzi (Townsend, Del.), Brooke Meyer (Naperville, Ill.), Kendra Rasmussen (Sartell, Minn.), Stephanie Walkom (Moon Township, Pa.), Sarah Wilkie (Ashby, Mass.) and Katie Zinn (Coquitlam, B.C.).
To qualify for the CHA All-Academic Team, an individual must post a 3.0 grade-point average or higher in all of the academic periods during which her team was actively competing. In all, the CHA had 77 student-athletes named to the All-Academic Team. CHA's Top Scholar Athlete is an award given annually to the player who achieves the highest GPA over the course of the academic semesters of competition. This season had a conference-record seven honorees with season GPAs of 4.0.
The second-year Nittany Lions will take to the ice on Oct. 4 at Vermont's Gutterson Fieldhouse for a two-game series. Following a two-game series at Quinnipiac, Penn State opens $90 million Pegula Ice Arena on Oct. 18-19 against Union. That series begins an eight-game home stand in the state-of-the-art building. The youth-laden Nittany Lions went 7-26-2 last season, but return 24 letterwinners, 98.6 percent of their scoring and the entire goaltending corps. Additionally, Penn State added four highly touted recruits to bolster the Nittany Lion effort.