Twelve Missouri Valley Conference volleyball student-athletes have been named to the 2015 MVC Scholar-Athlete First Team by a vote of the league’s volleyball sports information directors, with approval from head coaches. An additional 11 student-athletes have earned honorable mention, the league office announced today.
This year’s first team includes six players that have received previous MVC volleyball scholar-athlete recognition, including three repeat first team honorees, including Illinois State’s Ashley Rosch, Southern Illinois’ Taylor Pippen and Wichita State’s Katie Reilly. Two members of the first team boast a perfect 4.00 GPA, in Illinois State’s Jaelyn Keene and Jacqueline Twing.
Kim Deprez was named an Honorable Mention for the team. Standing with a 3.60 GPA, Deprez is a Communications major at the University of Evansville. As a senior, Deprez had her best year on the court. She led the Valley with 5.03 digs per set and also had one of the bests seasons in program history with a total of 598 digs on the season.
Forty-six student-athletes were nominated for the Valley’s scholar-athlete team. The criterion for the honor parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for Academic All-America voting. Nominees must be starters or important reserves with at least a 3.20 cumulative GPA (on a 4.00 scale). Also, students must have participated in at least 75-percent of the regular-season matches. Student-athletes must have reached sophomore status in both athletic and academic standing at their institution (true freshmen and redshirt freshmen were not eligible).
