Four Student-Athletes Named Track/XC Academic All-District
MEN'S TEAMS | WOMEN'S TEAMS
St. Louis, Mo., June 3, 2010 – The Washington University in St. Louis men’s and women’s cross country and track and field programs combined to see four student-athletes earn ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District VII honors, as announced Thursday by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Sophomore Liz Phillips earned the distinction as a first-team academic-district honoree, while junior Taryn Surtees, junior Ben Harmon and sophomore Dan Davis were second-team selections. With first-team academic all-district honors, Phillips is now eligible for selection to the Cross Country/Track and Field Academic All-America team, to be announced June 24.
Majoring in biomedical engineering with a 4.0 cumulative grade point average, Phillips qualified to compete in three NCAA Championship meets in 2009-10: cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field. She ran on the women’s distance medley relay team at the indoor championships and competed in the 1,500-meter at the outdoors, where she placed 10th overall.
Phillips was named the 2010 University Athletic Association (UAA) Indoor Track and Field Championship Women’s Track Athlete of the Meet after she won the mile with a school and UAA Championship record-breaking time of 4:55.32. Her personal-record outdoor 800-meter (2:11.33) and 1,500-meter (4:28.90) times rank as the second fastest in Washington University history. Phillips was also named the 2010 NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Elite 88 winner, awarded to the student-athlete at the championship site with the highest GPA.
Surtees is majoring in Spanish and biology with a 3.74 GPA. She repeated as the UAA individual cross country champion in the fall, and garnered cross country All-America honors for a second-straight year with a 20th-place finish at the national meet. Surtees competed in the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, earning All-America honors with an eighth-place finish in the 10,000. Her NCAA qualifying time of 17:00.78 in the 5,000 represented a new school record.
A multi-event specialist, Harmon boasts a 3.47 GPA as a mechanical engineering major. He qualified for the pentathlon at the NCAA Indoor Championships, placing ninth, and the decathlon at the outdoor meet, finishing 10th. Harmon earned UAA Indoor and Outdoor Championship Men’s Field Athlete of the Meet honors in 2010; he won the conference title in the long jump and pole vault at the indoor meet and the high jump and long jump at the outdoor championships.
Davis earned All-America honors for the first time in his career with a fifth-place finish in the 55-meter hurdles as this year’s NCAA indoor championships; he also qualified for the NCAA outdoor meet in the 110-meter hurdles. A mechanical engineering major with a 3.32 GPA, Davis holds the school record in the 55-hurdles with a mark of 7.53 and ranks second on the WUSTL top-time list in the 110-hurdles (14.61). He won conference titles in both events at this year’s UAA Championships.