June 21, 2012
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – BIG EAST hammer throw champion Andrew Hills, a member of the Notre Dame track and field team, today was named to the Capital One Academic All-America Men’s At-Large Third Team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
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.
Hills, who won the hammer throw at the 2012 BIG EAST Outdoor Championships with a throw of 190-05 feet and advanced to the NCAA East Preliminary Round in the event, graduated in May with a 3.81 grade point average in mathematics.
In addition to his hammer throw title this year, Hills was a consistent point scorer for the Irish over the years at the BIG EAST Championships, finishing seventh at outdoors and eighth at indoors in the shot put this year, seventh in the shot put during indoors in 2010, sixth in the hammer and shot put at outdoors in 2010, sixth in the shot put during indoors in 2009 and eighth in the shot put during outdoors in 2009. Hills also competed at the NCAA East Regionals in the shot put in 2010.
A three-time member of the BIG EAST Academic All-Star and three-time participant in the Rosenthal Leadership Academy, Hills was named to the Dean’s List five times and was the 2011-12 Notre Dame Club of St. Joseph Valley Rockne Student-Athlete Award winner for track and field.
The Toledo, Ohio native is set to move to Madison, Wisc., where he will work for the medical software company Epic Systems in the tech support and software development department.
Hills becomes the 20th Notre Dame track and field Academic All-American and first since Patrick Smyth made the first team in 2009. He is the second Irish student-athlete to earn Academic All-America accolades during the 2011-12 academic year. In the fall, Irish linebacker Manti Te’o earned second-team Academic All-America honors in football.
Notre Dame ranks second all-time with 223 Academic All-Americans since the program’s inception in 1952.
Since the program began in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA, covering all NCAA championship sports.
For more information about the Academic All-America Teams program, please visit the official CoSIDA web site at cosida.com, and for more on Notre Dame’s Academic All-America success, please visit the UND.com Academic All-Americans Page.
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