ESU All-Time Academic Awards

EAST STROUDSBURG – East Stroudsburg University seniors Lindsay Foder of the women's soccer team and Matt Freed of the football team have been named to the PSAC Fall Top 10 for athletic and academic achievement for the second straight year, the conference announced Friday.

Foder (Saylorsburg/Pleasant Valley) and Freed (Souderton/Souderton) are the eighth and ninth ESU student-athletes to earn multiple PSAC Top 10 selections in their careers, and are the first set to repeat in the same season.

ESU is one of three schools with two student-athletes on the list, along with Mercyhurst and Shippensburg. This marks the sixth straight Top 10 with at least one ESU student-athlete and gives the Warriors 11 total recipients since the start of the 2008-09 academic year.

Foder, a Speech Pathology major, had a 4.0 grade-point average in her first semester in graduate school after finishing her undergraduate program in three years with a 4.0 GPA. She is a two-time ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District selection, earning spots on the team the past two years.

On the field, Foder was a three-time All-PSAC and two-time All-Region selection and finished sixth in school history with 21 career goals and 58 points and tied for sixth with 16 assists. She was named to the All-PSAC second team this year, was on the All-PSAC East first team at forward in 2009 and the second team at midfield in 2008.

Her All-Region accolades came from the NSCAA in 2009 and Daktronics in 2008, when she had nine goals and seven assists while helping the Warriors to the first-ever NCAA Tournament win in program history with a goal and an assist in a 4-0 win over West Virginia Wesleyan. She had seven goals and six assists as a junior and was a member of three straight PSAC playoff appearances for a program that had seven consecutive losing seasons before she arrived in 2007.

Freed, a History major with a 3.76 GPA, had one of the most distinguished careers in ESU football history. The outside linebacker is the only Warrior to earn three All-America honors from the same organization after being named to the Daktronics Division II and AP Little All-America teams for the third straight season in 2010.

The only two-time first team Academic All-American in ESU football history, Freed was the only defensive player in the nation on the regional ballot for the Harlon Hill Award this season and was named the Daktronics Super Region One Defensive Player of the Year in 2009 and 2010. He was also a national semifinalist for the Campbell Trophy from the National Football Foundation.

Freed finished his career ranked third at ESU with 399 career tackles and fifth with 22.5 sacks, recording 120 tackles as a senior, 132 as a junior on the Warriors' NCAA Playoff team and 126 stops as a sophomore in his first year as a starter. He ranked in the top 12 in Division II in tackles all three seasons and had 24 games with double-figure tackles in 34 career starts. He had seven tackles at the Cactus Bowl, Division II's Senior All-Star Game, in his final career game.

The other eight recipients from across the conference are linebacker Bryan Boyce and safety Ian Wild of Mercyhurst, field hockey player Kristen Brooks and cross country national champion Neely Spence of Shippensburg, cornerback Connor Kimball of Gannon, safety Nick Sipes of Clarion, women's soccer player Jessica Bennett of West Chester and cross country All-American Jen Harpp of Slippery Rock.

The PSAC's sports information directors have been selecting seasonal Top 10 lists since 1997-98. Previous two-time selections from ESU are Paul Wagner (track & field), Chris Bach (men's basketball), Jimmy Terwilliger (football), Kamar Samuels (men's soccer), Mark Stinson (track & field), Cheryl Griffin (track & field) and Katie Horst (field hockey).

The Top 10 award winners for each season are placed on the ballot for the Pete Nevins Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award, which will be announced in the spring. One men's and one women's student-athlete will be selected to receive the PSAC's top scholar-athlete honor, which was renamed in 2008 to recognize the contributions of Pete Nevins, ESU's sports information director from 1969-2002.

ESU has had 35 recipients of the Top 10 award, ranking fourth of the 14 PASSHE institutions in the conference. Shippensburg has 39, followed by Edinboro and Clarion with 38 and ESU, IUP and Slippery Rock with 35 each.


2010 PSAC Fall Top 10 List

Men
Bryan Boyce, Mercyhurst, football
Matt Freed, ESU, football
Connor Kimball, Gannon, football
Nick Sipes, Clarion, football
Ian Wild, Mercyhurst, football

Women
Jessica Bennett, West Chester, soccer
Kristen Brooks, Shippensburg, field hockey
Lindsay Foder, ESU, soccer
Jen Harpp, Slippery Rock, cross country
Neely Spence, Shippensburg, cross country