St. Peter, Minn. – The 2014-15 Capital Once Academic All-District Men’s and Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country Teams, selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America, have been released to recognize the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performances athletically and in the classroom. Among the list of male and female individuals from District 6 receiving CoSIDA Acadmic All-District honors is Gustavus Adolphus senior thrower Elizabeth Weiers (Le Center, Minn.).
An English major with a GPA of 4.0, Elizabeth Weiers is a first-time honoree on the CoSIDA Academic All-District Team. A four-year member of the Head Coach Dale Bahr’s indoor and outdoor track and field teams, Weiers has been a staple of the throwing team as a weight throw and hammer throw specialist. This season alone, Weiers posted a career-best fourth place finish in the weight throw at the MIAC Indoor Championships, and won gold in the hammer throw at the MIAC Outdoor Championships for the second straight season. The two-time conference champion and three-time all-conference honoree in the hammer throw will cap her Gustavus career this weekend at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships where she ranks 11th in the hammer with a program-record toss of 173-feet 11-inches recorded earlier this season.
Thanks to her prowess in the classroom, Weiers has been the recipient of a multitude of major honors. She is a member of Phi Betta Kappa, has earned Academic All-Conference honors six times, is a two-time recipient of the MIAC’s Elite 22 Award (MIAC Outdoor Championships), and just recently earned the NCAA’s Elite 89 Award at the NCAA Championships for the second consecutive year.
Weiers marks the seventh CoSIDA Academic All-District honoree from Gustavus so far during the 2014-15 academic year. She follows women’s hockey player Carolyn Draayer (Sr., Deephaven, Minn.), swimmers Katie Olson (Sr., North Oaks, Minn.) and Jennifer Strom (Sr., Rochester, Minn.), men’s soccer players Braden Schmid (Sr., West Fargo, N.D.) and Ryan Tollefsrud (Sr., Spearfish, S.D.), and baseball player Dalton Mattson (So., Princeton, Minn.).
The Academic All-District teams include the student-athletes divided into eight geographic districts across the United States and Canada. This is the fourth year of the expanded Academic All-America program as CoSIDA moved from recognizing a University Division (Division I) and a College Division (all non-Division I) and has doubled the number of scholar-athletes honored. The expanded teams include NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II and NCAA Division III participants, while the College Division Academic All-America Team combines NAIA, Canadian and two-year schools.
First-team Academic All-District honorees advance to the Capital One Academic All-America Team ballot, where first-, second- and third-team All-America honorees will be selected later this month.