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All four advance to CoSIDA Academic
All-America D3 national ballot

WINTHROP, Mass. – As announced late last week, four Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) student-athletes have earned 2019-20 Academic All-District Division III Basketball First Team accolades, which is selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA): Colby-Sawyer College senior Lexie Hamilton (pictured), Emmanuel College senior Yuleska Ramirez-Tejeda, Johnson & Wales University (RI) graduate student Maddy Moro, and Saint Joseph's College of Maine junior Jack Casale. 

This award recognizes the nation's top student-athletes for their combined performances on the court and in the classroom. First-team Academic All-District honorees advance to the CoSIDA Academic All-America ballot. Those honorees will be announced in mid-March.

Hamilton is one of only five student-athletes to be honored from NCAA Division III and becomes the second Colby-Sawyer women's basketball player to be honored. Colby-Sawyer Hall of Famer Beth Tower (Chartier) '97 was an Academic All-District second-team selection in 1997.

The most recent Charger to be honored with this prestigious academic award was Evelyn Miller. Miller, representing the women's tennis team, garnered accolades in 2018 as a first-team Academic All-District Division III Women's At-Large selection. This season, Hamilton is averaging an impressive 14 points, 7.3 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game. She leads all of NCAA Division III women's basketball in assists per game and total assists with 179. Hamilton has posted two triple-doubles this season, which is tied for the third most in the country.

Hamilton is Colby-Sawyer's all-time leader in career assists with 680, which places her eighth all-time on the NCAA career assists list. She also ranks seventh on Colby-Sawyer's all-time scoring list with 1,257 points. Hamilton has 222 career steals to rank seventh, is ninth with 149 made three-pointers and is sixth with 286 made free throws. The senior point guard has been named GNAC Player of the Week once, New England Women's Basketball Association (NEWBA) Player of the Week once, and to the NEWBA honor roll twice this season.

As for Ramirez-Tejeda, the Cambridge, Mass. native has earned CoSIDA All-District honors for the third consecutive year. A three-year starter for the Saints since transferring to Emmanuel prior to the start of the 2017-18 season, Ramirez-Tejeda is averaging 18.9 points, 11.3 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 2.0 steals per game while shooting 47.7% (200-419) from the floor. In just three seasons, she ranks fourth all-time at Emmanuel in career points (1,509) and third in rebounds (879).

A Criminal Justice major, Ramirez-Tejeda collected CoSIDA Academic All-American honors last season as well as GNAC Academic All-Conference honors following her sophomore and junior years.

A native of Catawissa, Pa., Moro has a 3.70 GPA as she works on her master's degree in sports leadership. In order to be nominated, student-athletes must have at least a 3.30 grade point average and play in 50 percent of the team's games. 

Moro is ranked 20th in the NCAA, third in the GNAC, at 11.7 rebounds per game. That rate jumps up to 13.3 RPG versus league teams. In addition, she's averaging 11.2 points per game to make her one of five players in the conference to average a double-double.

This season she has posted 12 double-doubles, including four of her last five games. Her best outing was a 22-point, 22-rebound double dip against Bryn Athyn. She becomes the third women's basketball student-athlete to earn all-district honors and the first since Raquel Pederzani was a Third-Team Academic All-American in 2018. JWU is on the road Tuesday to face Saint Joseph's in the quarterfinals of the GNAC Tournament.

Casale, a Portland, Maine native and Accounting & Finance major, owns a 3.49 GPA, garnered GNAC All-Academic honors last summer, and been listed on the Dean's List twice during his time at Saint Joseph's.

In 23 games this winter, Casale is averaging 26.1 points, 9.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists while shooting 49.2% (203-413) from the field, 36.1% (69-191) from three-point land, and 78.1% (125-160) from the FT line. He leads the GNAC in field goals made, free throws made, scoring average and points (600) and ranks second in defensive rebounds (184) and third in three-pointers made (65). Casale is also fifth in the conference in rebounding average, sixth in total rebounds (210), and eighth in FT%.

As of February 21st, Casale ranks sixth in NCAA DIII Men's Basketball in scoring average, seventh in defensive rebounds per game (8.39), 10th in field goals made, 11th in total points, and 14th in field goal attempts. For his career, Casale currently ranks second in program history in scoring average (20.4 PPG), third in three-pointers attempted (562) and rebounding average (7.9 RPG), fourth in three-pointers made (219), eighth in three-point percentage (39.0%) and points (1,530), 10th in field goals attempted (1,085), 11th in field goals made (524) and FT% (76.0%), and 14th in rebounds (592).

He is the only GNAC men's player and one of two players from a Maine college or university – Colby senior Sam Jefferson being the other - to earn the academic accolade.

Info Provided by EC, CSC, JWU. SJC Athletics Communications.

The Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) is an NCAA Division III association made up of 13 member institutions and over 3,000 student-athletes across the New England region. Founded in 1995, the GNAC annually sponsors and administers 22 championships, while balancing academic integrity, athletic opportunity and community involvement in an effort to enhance the student-athlete experience. 

– #TheGNAC –