ROCK HILL, SC—The 2011-12 Winthrop men's tennis team has joined its women's counterpart by being named an All-Academic Team by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association while five members of the team earned ITA Scholar-Athlete honors. 

The ITA All-Academic Team award is open to any ITA program that has a cumulative team grade point average of 3.20 or above (on a 4.00 scale) for the fall 2011 and spring 2012 semesters.  The Eagle men had a team GPA of 3.57  for the year.  The Winthrop men's team was among 79 NCAA Div. I schools and six  Big South Conference members that received the award. The other five  Big South schools were Radford, Gardner-Webb, Coastal Carolina, UNC Asheville and Presbyterian College.

The five members of the men's team who were named ITA Scholar-Athletes for achieving a 3.5 GPA or better for the academic year include: Chase Altieri  (Fr., Lake Wylie, SC), 3.89, sport management;  Dylan Comerford (Fr., Johannesburg, S. Africa), 3.58, business; Yuta Hirokawa (So., Nigata, Japan), 3.88, exercise science; Guiy Kubi (S(r., Tiberias, Israell), 3.93, finance; Nadav Ruppin (Sr., Ramat Hasharon, Israel), 3.96, economics.

“I am extremely proud of our team for their efforts in the classroom over the last year," said men's head coach Andrew Stubbs. "These academic awards are well deserved and a direct result of our players' dedication to pursue excellence in everything that they do.”