The Northern Illinois University women’s tennis team has been named an ITA All-Academic Team and seven Huskies have been named 2022 ITA Scholar-Athletes by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, as the organization released its academic awards list earlier this month.

As a team, NIU finished the spring 2022 semester with a cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.497, easily surpassing the 3.2 minimum required to earn ITA All-Academic Team honors.  The Huskies’ 3.814 semester GPA ranked second among all NIU teams.

In order to qualify for ITA Scholar-Athlete recognition, athletes must have finished the year with a minimum GPA of 3.50. The seven Huskies to achieve ITA Scholar-Athlete honors included seniors and 2022 NIU graduates Iuliia Dmitrieva (Smolensk, Russia), Christy Robinson (Wellington, New Zealand), Paula Veyhle (Stuttgart, Germany) and Fernanda Naves (Veracruz, Mexico), sophomores Erika Dimitriev (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and Anastasia Rakita (Moscow, Russia) and freshman Reagan Welch (Greenbrier, Tenn.)

“We are very proud of the ladies’ efforts in the classroom this season,” said NIU head coach Eric Burns. We especially excelled during the spring when we are in the busiest time of our schedule. It shows a great commitment to academics from our student-athletes, with the assistance from our Student-Athlete Academic Support Services (SAASS) unit, and also demonstrates the ability of our kids to manage time, which is an important skill to have. We couldn’t be happier and hope we can continue to raise the bar each semester.”

In all, 1,517 Division I women student-athletes and 250 programs received recognition in 2022.

The Huskies finished the 2022 season 17-11 overall and 4-6 versus Mid-American Conference opponents with four wins in the last five matches. The 17 regular season wins were the most by the Huskies since 1989-90, while NIU’s 43 dual wins over the past three seasons (including 12 wins prior to the COVID shutdown) are the most over a three-year stretch since 1984-86.