Cavaliers Earn ITA All-Academic Team Honor
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July 22, 2016
Complete List on the ITA website
TEMPE, Ariz. – The 2016 NCAA Champion Virginia men’s tennis team has been named a 2016 ITA All-Academic team while two players, Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (Charlotte, N.C.) and Mac Styslinger (Birmingham, Ala.) were named ITA Scholar-Athletes in honors announced Thursday (July 22) by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
Kwiatkowski, the ACC Men’s Tennis Scholar-Athlete of the Year, earned his second-straight ITA Singles All-American honor after advancing to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Singles Championship, finished the season ranked No. 7 nationally. The NCAA Tournament Outstanding Player for the national champion Cavaliers spent the entire season ranked in the top-10, amassing a 39-8 record. Kwiatkowski and Styslinger finished the season ranked No. 19 at doubles. Kwiatkowski is the fourth player in the history of the ITA All-American to win both the tournament’s singles and doubles title in the same year. Kwiatkowski, a rising senior, was named to Virginia’s athletics honor roll in both the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016. He is enrolled in the prestigious McIntire School of Commerce at UVA, which has been ranked as the nation’s No. 2 business undergraduate program by Bloomberg Businessweek.
Styslinger, who was named to the All-ACC Academic Team, finished his senior season with a 28-9 record in doubles and a No. 19 ranking, earning a spot in the field of the NCAA Doubles tournament. Styslinger won the ITA All-American doubles title in the fall, playing alongside Kwiatkowski. The 2013 NCAA Doubles Champion finished his four-year Cavaliers career with a 95-29 record in doubles and a 71-26 mark in singles.
The ITA All-Academic Team award is presented to schools that have a cumulative team grade point average of 3.20 or above (on a 4.00 scale). All eligible student-athletes whose names appear on the eligibility form and have competed in one or more varsity matches must average into the GPA for the current academic year (including fall 2015 and spring 2016). Virginia was one of five ACC schools to earn the honor along with Duke, Louisville, Notre Dame and Wake Forest.
In order to earn ITA Scholar-Athlete status a player must meet the following criteria: 1.) be a varsity letter winner, 2.) have a grade point average of at least 3.50 (on a 4.00 scale) for the current academic year, and 3.) have been enrolled at their present school for at least 2 semesters (including freshman thorough senior year).