Griz tennis teams make ITA Academic Award haul

Montana's men's and women's tennis programs have both been named All-Academic teams by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA), and a combined nine players have been named ITA Scholar-Athletes, the organization announced Tuesday.

The ITA Scholar-Athlete award honors letter winners across all levels of tennis who achieve a minimum 3.5 GPA, well above the 3.2 GPA required to earn Academic All-Big Sky honors.

The Grizzly men tied for the most ITA Scholar-Athletes in the Big Sky with four, while the women tied for the second-most in the league with five.

This year, both the men and the women placed six players each on the Academic All-Big Sky list.

The ITA All-Academic Team award recognizes programs who achieve elite academic performances with a 3.2 cumulative GPA needed to qualify.

Montana's men's and women's teams both hit that mark easily, with the men achieving a department-best 3.56 GPA and the women coming in with a 3.44 GPA over the last academic year.

"What the men and the women both have been able to achieve in the classroom is impressive," said men's head coach Jason Brown, recently named the Big Sky Coach of the Year after his first season at the helm.

"I'm amazed how well they all do considering the difficult class loads, the fact that some of them are taking classes in their second or third language, and the amount of travel we all have to do for practice and matches."

For the men, outgoing seniors Yannick Schmidl and Ignacio Tejerina were named Scholar-Athletes, as were rising sophomores Ludvig Hallgren and Max Korkh.

The Scholar-Athlete award is Schmidl's third recognition of the year from the ITA, who had earned a national ranking earlier in the season and was named the mountain region's most improved senior after Montana made a second-straight trip to the Big Sky title match.

On the women's team, outgoing seniors Cam Kincaid and Catherine Orfanos picked up Scholar-Athlete recognition alongside rising senior Nathalie Joanlanne and rising sophomores Bianca Bostrom and Julia Ronney.

Orfanos became the first Grizzly ever to earn the Scholar-Athlete four-straight years.

In total, 735 teams and 4,328 student-athletes across all five divisions of college tennis were honored by the ITA for their success in the classroom.

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Bianca Bostrom

Ludvig Hallgren

Nathalie Joanlanne

Cam Kincaid

Max Korkh

Catherine Orfanos

Julia Ronney

Yannick Schmidl

Ignacio Tejerina

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