Junior right wing Peter Schneider is one of four Notre Dame student-athletes to be selected to the Capital One Academic At-Large District V First Team.  Schneider is a six-time Dean's List student with a 3.96 grade-point average with a double major in economics and business.

Armstrong, Meinhardt, Reaney and Schneider Selected To Capital One Academic At-Large All-District V First Team

May 15, 2014

Notre Dame, Ind. – Four University of Notre Dame student-athletes – junior Ashley Armstrong (women’s golf), graduate student Gerek Meinhardt (fencing), junior Emma Reaney (women’s swimming and diving) and junior Peter Schneider (hockey) – have earned Capital One Academic All-District V At-Large first team honors, the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) announced Thursday (May 15).

The foursome and their fellow first team honorees now advance to the Capital One Academic All-America® Team ballot, where first-, second- and third team All-America honorees will be selected later this month.

To be eligible for Academic All-America® consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. Sports in the at-large program consist of women’s bowling, men’s and women’s fencing, women’s field hockey, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s rifle, women’s rowing, men’s and women’s skiing, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s volleyball, men’s and women’s water polo and men’s wrestling.

Armstrong earns District V All-Academic honors for the second consecutive year. In 2013, she became the first Notre Dame women’s golfer to garner Capital One Academic All-America honors when she was named to the Women’s At-Large Team third team. A junior majoring in mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, she carries a 3.89 grade-point average and has been named to the Dean’s List during all six semesters she has been at Notre Dame.

During the 2013-14 school year, the Flossmoor, Ill., native led Notre Dame with a 75.34 stroke average. Her best finish came at the Mary Fossum Invitational where she tied for second place and finished with a three-round total of 220 that included a 69 on the final day. She also had two other top-25 finishes this past season. Armstrong helped lead her team to a fifth-place tie in its inaugural appearance at the ACC Championships this spring. For her career, she owns a 75.29 stroke average and has registered five top-10 finishes and 15 top-25 finishes overall.

Junior Ashley Armstrong has been named to the Capital One All-District V At-Large Team for the second consecutive year. She was a third team Academic All-American in 2013.

A three-time medalist during her career, Armstrong won the BIG EAST Championship as a freshman in 2012 and then was victorious in back-to-back tournaments during the spring of her sophomore year in 2013 with wins at the Insperity Lady Jaguar Intercollegiate and the Briar’s Creek Invitational. She was recognized a year ago as Golfweek’s Women’s National Player of the Week (March 25-31) and the BIG EAST Women’s Golf Player of the Week (March 17-23). In addition, Armstrong was selected to the all-BIG EAST Women’s Golf Team for the second straight season after finishing fifth at the conference tournament.

Armstrong led her team to the ’13 BIG EAST crown, following a runner-up finish in ’12. In each of her three seasons at Notre Dame, she and her Irish teammates have earned a berth into the NCAA regionals. Last season, Armstrong tallied three top-10 finishes and seven top-25 finishes through 10 tournaments with all 28 rounds counting toward the team scoring.

Meinhardt graduated Cum Laude from the University of Notre Dame in May 2013 with a degree in information technology management and is currently pursuing his MBA from the Mendoza School of Business where he has a 3.83 grade-point average. As an undergraduate he was named to the Dean’s List three times.

A four-time fencing All-American, Meinhardt also is a two-time NCAA Champion and two-time Olympian. He competed in both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, helping anchor the men’s foil squad at the London Games to a fourth-place finish. The San Francisco, Calif., native has competed in both NCAA and international competitions, never finishing outside the top 10 in any event.

Gerek Meinhardt was the 2014 NCAA Men’s Foil Champion. He graduated from Notre Dame in 2013 and is currently working on his MBA.

Perhaps his most impressive accomplishment to date, at the start of the 2014 season Meinhardt was ranked as the No. 1 men’s foilist in the world – a first for both the US Men’s foil program and the first time an athlete with ties to the Notre Dame fencing team earned such a high ranking while still competing at the collegiate level.

Meinhardt boasts a 103-9 (.920) career win-loss record and his winning percentage stands at ninth among the top 30 fencers at Notre Dame (40+ wins) and third on the foil-only list. He recently won the Byron V. Kanaley Award, Notre Dame’s most prestigious award for student-athletes, which is presented to seniors who have demonstrated exemplary leadership. He is a four-time monogram winner and has twice been recognized as the Notre Dame Monogram Club Fencing MVP and a Notre Dame Club of St. Joseph Valley Rockne Student-Athlete award winner.

For Reaney, District V All-Academic honors are just the latest in a long list of accolades after a historic junior campaign. In the classroom Reaney boasts a steady 3.68 GPA in design from the College of Arts & Letters. She also has a minor in business economics and was named the ACC Women’s Swimming & Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year in April. Reaney has twice been named to the Dean’s List at Notre Dame and was a two-time BIG EAST Academic All-Star before earning a spot on the all-ACC Academic Team this season.

The Lawrence, Kan., native earned national recognition this season after setting an NCAA/U.S. Open/American Record in the 200-yard breaststroke at February’s ACC Championships to claim the last of three individual titles at the meet.

Junior Emma Reaney was the NCAA champion in the 200-meter breastroke and has a 3.68 grade-point average as a design major in the College of Arts and Letters.

She then did herself one better at the NCAA Championships in March as she broke her own records in the 200 breast to become the first Notre Dame swimmer or diver to win a national championship. After earning Most Valuable Women’s Swimmer honors at the ACC Championships, Reaney garnered ACC Women’s Swimmer of the Year accolades following her impressive NCAA Championships.

Schneider rounds out the list of four District V All-Academic honorees for the Irish on the men and women’s At-Large teams this spring.

A native of Vienna, Austria, Schneider is a six-time Dean’s List selection with an impressive 3.96 grade-point average in his double major of Economics and Business while having a minor in Actuary. He notched his second perfect 4.0 semester during the spring of 2014 with his first coming during the fall of 2012.

He has twice been selected as the winner of the Notre Dame Club of St. Joseph Valley Rockne Student-Athlete Award (2013, 2014) and was Notre Dame’s selection to the 2012-13 CCHA Scholar-Athlete Team in the final season of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association.

A three-time monogram winner, Schneider helped the Irish to a 23-15-2 overall record this past season along with a trip to the Hockey East semifinals and the NCAA West Regionals. He turned in career highs in goals (8), assists (8) and points (16) for the year while adding one short-handed goal and two game winners and was +7 for the campaign.

Schneider has played in 97 career games at Notre Dame, scoring 15 goals with 16 assists for 31 points. He was a member of the final CCHA Mason Cup championship team in 2013.

About The Capital One Academic All-America Program

Capital One has been the entitlement rights holder to CoSIDA’s Academic All-America teams programs since 2011.

The Academic All-District ® teams are divided into eight geographic districts across the United States and Canada. This is the second year of the expanded Academic All-America® program as CoSIDA moved from recognizing a University Division (Division I) and a College Division (all non Division I) and has doubled the number of scholar-athletes honored. The expanded teams include NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II and NCAA Division III participants, while the College Division team combines NAIA, Canadian and two-year schools.

The Capital One Division II and III Academic All-America® program is being financially supported by the NCAA Division II and III national governance structures, to assist CoSIDA with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2013-14 DII and DIII Academic All-America® teams program.