Junior Kate Del Fava was named to the 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-America® Division I Second Team, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), the organization announced Thursday. She is only the third Illinois State soccer player to be recognized by CoSIDA with Academic All-America honors and the first since Bethany Brown in 2010.
This is the third honor Del Fava has received this week for her dedication, both on the field and in the classroom, as she was honored as a PNC Bank Achiever of the Game at half time of the Redbird men's basketball game on Dec. 1 and named a recipient of the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Good Neighbor Award on Dec. 4.
The midfielder has a 4.00 cumulative grade point average while double majoring in Pre-Veterinarian Medicine and Animal Science. This season, Del Fava earned MVC Scholar-Athlete First Team honors for the second time in her career and was featured in the Oct. 3 version of the MVC Scholar-Athlete Spotlight. The Kenosha, Wisconsin, native was named a MVC Commissioner's Academic Excellence Award winner in 2018-18 and has made the MVC and AFNI honor rolls every semester she has been eligible.
During her junior campaign, Del Fava netted five goals, a team-high shared with redshirt-sophomore Abby Basler, and dished out three assists. She averaged over 83 minutes per match while starting every game for the Redbirds, earning All-MVC First Team honors for the second year in a row and helping lead the team to a semi-final finish at the MVC Soccer Championship in Chicago. Del Fava has played in every game since she set foot on campus in 2016 and has started in all but two.
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