Aug. 17, 2007

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IRVING, Texas - Fifteen Conference USA tennis players received Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) scholar athlete awards as announced by the governing body of collegiate tennis. Memphis' men's squad is represented by a league-high five individuals, while Rice's women's team had four individuals honored. In addition, Memphis' men's and both Rice programs were honored with team All-Academic Awards.

For the women, Memphis' Dara Toulch and Cristina Weiser received individual recognition, along with Emily Braid, Julie Chao, Dominique Karas and Jennifer Pan of Rice.

On the men's side, five different Tigers were named ITA Scholar Athletes for their academic effort during the 2006-07 season. The five players, Benedikt Fischer, Spencer Heflin, Amrit Narasimhan, Garrison Pilant and Tezar Putra, marked the most ever individual honors received from the ITA in school history. The previous best were three honorees during the 2003 and 2004 seasons.

Rice's three men's honorees were Jonathan Greenberg, Dennis Polyakov and Sung Hoon Shin. Jimmy Roesch represented league member UCF on the list and was the ninth men's honoree from C-USA.

The ITA All-Academic Team award is open to any ITA program that has a cumulative team grade point average of 3.20 or above (on a 4.00 scale). All eligible student-athletes whose names appear on the NCAA/NAIA/NJCAA eligibility form and have competed in one or more varsity matches must average into the GPA for the current academic year.

In order to earn ITA Scholar-Athlete status a player must be a varsity letterwinner, have a grade point average of at least 3.50 (on a 4.00 scale) for the current academic year and have been enrolled at their present school for at least two semesters (including freshman thorough senior year).