April 9, 2001

Irish senior cross country and track and field middle-distance runner Nate Andrulonis earned top honors Monday night at the ninth annual Academic Excellence Awards Dinner organized by the University of Notre Dame's Office of Academic Services for Student-Athletes and sponsored by the Athletic Department.

The dinner, held in the concourse of the Joyce Center, honored 480 student-athletes who possess a 3.0 cumulative grade-point average or higher. Also honored were the student-athletes on each varsity team with the highest cumulative GPA (trainers, managers and cheerleaders included), plus the teams with the highest combined GPAs in each semester.

Professor James Langford, emeritus director of Notre Dame Press and president of "There Are Children Here," served as guest speaker.

Andrulonis (from Pittsburgh, Pa.), a mechanical engineering major (in the College of Engineering) who also is pursuing a master's degree in business administration at the same time, was honored with the Top Gun Award as the graduating senior with the highest cumulative GPA (4.0).

Fifteen athletes were cited for earning 4.0 grade-point averages during the 2000 spring semester (class years for '99-'00) -- Andrulonis, Ricky Buhrman (tennis, junior, Parkland, Fla.), Nick Fehring (track, senior, Milwaukee, Wis.), Ray Fitzpatrick (swimming, senior, Doylestown, Pa.), Lauren Fuchs (golf, sophomore, Louisville, Ky.), Matt Hedden (swimming, senior, Westerville, Ohio), Andy Jurkowski (hockey, senior, Madison, Wis.), Aimee Kalogera (fencing, senior, Wyckoff, N.J.), Jennifer Kleine (sophomore, cheerleading, Barrington, Ill.), C.J. Lanktree (cheerleading, junior, Morris Plains, N.J.), Megan McCauley (track, sophomore, Aberdeen, Wash.), Kelly Orsi (fencing, senior, Crystal Lake, Ill.), Jeff Perconte (baseball, senior, Arlington Heights, Ill.), Vanessa Pruzinsky (soccer, freshman, Trumbull, Conn.) and Mike Tribe (football, senior, Chicago, Ill.).

Reaching the 4.0 mark in the 2000 fall semester were Andrulonis, Buhrman, Ann Marie Dillhoff (rowing, sophomore, Cincinnati, Ohio), Kerry Donovan (trainer, senior, Vail, Colo.), Katherine Flanagan (fencing, senior, North Hills, Pa.), Fuchs, Michelle Graham (volleyball, senior, Austin, Texas), Jason Halvorson (football, sophomore, Burnsville, Minn.), Amber Holleman (manager, junior, Ortonville, Mich.), Jessica Johnstone (swimming, senior, Marietta, Ga.), John Keane (track, sophomore, Winona, Minn.), Lanktree, Connor LaRose (soccer, senior, Claremont, Calif.), Ashlee Logan (rowing, sophomore, Stockton, Calif.), Carrie Marshall (lacrosse, senior, Monument, Colo.), McCauley, Bridget O'Brien (track, senior, Bloomington, Minn.), Matt Peters (junior, Helena, Mont.), Pruzinsky, Megan Sanders (rowing, freshman, Kendallville, Ind.), Dan Storino (soccer, senior, Inverness, Ill.), and Nina Vaughan (tennis, junior, Corona del Mar, Calif.).

The teams with the highest combined GPAs were women's track in the spring 2000 semester at 3.314 and women's tennis in the fall 2000 semester at 3.484.

Here are the individuals with the top cumulative GPAs by sport (must have achieved upper-class status):

More than one of every three Notre Dame student-athletes made the Dean's List (3.4 grade-point average or better on 4.0 scale) during the 2000 fall semester -- and that was just one of the highlights of an academic effort that ranked as possibly the best ever in a semester by Irish student-athletes. Of the 737 student-athletes on Notre Dame varsity rosters, 275 (37 percent) made the Dean's List, an improvement of four percent from the 2000 spring semester figures.

Of those 275 who made the Dean's List, 41 came from rowing, 29 from women's track, 27 from men's track, 19 from men's swimming, 16 from men's lacrosse, 15 from men's fencing, 12 from both men's and women's soccer and from football, and 11 each from baseball and women's fencing.

Both the men's and women's basketball squads earned their best-ever fall semester averages -- with the men at 3.027 and the women at 3.118, marking the first time either of those teams has been above the 3.0 mark in the fall semester.

The football squad's 2.668 figure marked the highest since the Academic Services for Student-Athletes office has been keeping records. Two-thirds of the upperclass football players had a semester average better than their cumulative averages.

Here are some other highlights:
* The women's tennis squad had its best-ever semester at 3.484, a figure that also was tops among all Irish varsity teams.
* The baseball team's 3.199 semester average, the men's fencing average of 3.252, the men's lacrosse mark of 3.193, the rowing team's 3.357 average and the women's track team's 3.395 mark all qualified as the best semesters ever for those sports.
* The men's golf team's 3.243 average and the hockey average of 3.089 also qualified as their highest for fall semesters.
* The softball team's 3.213 figure and the volleyball team's 3.267 mark were their second-best semesters ever.