AUSTIN, Texas – Saint Joseph's College senior guard Kelsi McNamara (West Newbury, Mass.) has earned 2018-19 Google Cloud Third Team Academic All-America® honors, as announced by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) on Wednesday afternoon.
The award recognizes the nation's top student-athletes for their combined performances on the court and in the classroom. The Google Cloud Academic All-America® program separately recognizes men's and women's basketball honorees in four divisions — NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III and NAIA.
An Elementary Education major with a concentration in Special Education, McNamara collected Google Cloud Academic All-District® accolades during her junior and senior years and also claimed Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) All-Academic accolades after her sophomore and junior years. In addition, McNamara was listed on the Dean's List in 2017 and 2018 and has completed several internships at local elementary schools.
McNamara is one of four individuals in the history of SJC Athletics to garner Academic All-America® honors as she joins Darian Berry '19 (Men's Basketball), Taylor Black '17 (Baseball), and Alyssa Dunn '11 (Softball) on the exclusive list.
McNamara, the 2019 GNAC, NEWBA, and MWBCA Player of the Year, averaged 21.2 points, 6.7 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game while shooting 43.9% (207-472) from the field, 37.5% (93-248) from three-point range, and 88.4% (129-146) from the free-throw line during her senior season. She finished the year ranked second in NCAA DIII Women's Basketball in assists (200), third in three-pointers made (93), fourth in points (636), fifth in assists average, sixth in field goals made (207), free-throw percentage, and three-point attempts (248), and ninth in scoring average.
During her senior season McNamara eclipsed the Monks' career records for points (2,067), assists (621), three-pointers made (327) and attempted (856), and field goal attempts (1,660). She also moved up the SJC career leaderboard in games (118, 2nd), field goals made (677, 2nd), free throws made (386, 2nd), assists average (5.3, 2nd), free throw percentage (83.5%, 3rd), scoring average (17.5, 3rd), three-point percentage (38.2%, 4th), free throws attempted (462, 6th), and steals (204, 9th).
She is the one of two GNAC players – Yuleska Ramirez-Tejeda (Emmanuel), who earned Second Team honors, is the other – and the only player from a Maine college or university to earn the academic accolade.
The 15-woman Google Cloud Academic All-America® women's team has an average GPA of 3.88 with the first team checking in at 3.97. Five of the 15 women have perfect 4.0 GPAs.
The Division III Academic All-America® program is being financially supported by the NCAA Division III national governance structure to assist CoSIDA with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2018-19 Division II Academic All-America® teams program.
For more information regarding the Google Cloud Academic All-America® program, visit https://academicallamerica.com/.
COMPLETE GOOGLE CLOUD ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICA® RELEASE
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Saint Joseph's College is Maine's only Catholic liberal arts college, providing a supportive, personalized and career-focused education for more than 100 years. From its 474-acre campus on the shores of Sebago Lake, the College offers more than 40 undergraduate programs to a population of approximately 1,000 students. Saint Joseph's College Online provides certificates, undergraduate and advanced degrees for working adults through an online learning program. For more, visit www.sjcme.edu.