May 16, 2002
Notre Dame, Ind. – Notre Dame’s top golfer, Steve Ratay (Sr., Arlington Heights, Ill.), and hockey standout David Inman (Sr., Toronto, Ont) have been selected to the 2002 Verizon Men’s Academic All-District Five At-Large team. Both student-athletes move onto the national ballot for Academic All-American honors that will be announced in June.
For Ratay, this marks the second consecutive season that he has been a District Five selection. In 2001, he moved on to become a third team Verizon Academic all-American on the at-Large team for spring sports.
He finished his Notre Dame career as one of the finest golfers ever for the Irish. In his final season, Ratay closed with a 73.03 season average in 32 rounds for the best single-season average in school history. For his career, Ratay played 105 rounds and had a 74.46 career average to finish .03 off the school record of 74.43. The BIG EAST runner-up in 2002, Ratay had seven top 10 finishes for the Irish during the 2001-02 season.
A Dean’s List selection in each of his first seven semesters at Notre Dame, Ratay has a 3.82 grade point average in Computer Science and will graduate on May 19. He was selected as a winner of the Byron V. Kanaley Award which is the most prestigious honor awarded a Notre Dame senior student-athlete at the spring awards banquet. A member of Notre Dame’s Academic Honors Program, Ratay won the team’s Rockne Student-Athlete Award in 2001 and was the team’s Most Valuable Player in 2002.
The Notre Dame men’s golf team has had a golfer selected to the national Academic all-American team in each of the last two years.
Inman joins Ratay after he finished second on the Irish in scoring last season with career highs in goals (19), assists (18), points (37) and power play goals (7). He finished fifth in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) with 14 goals and 17 assists for 31 points in 28 league games. Inman was an honorable mention all-CCHA selection and was named to the league’s eight-man all-Academic team for the 2001-02 season.
A member of Notre Dame’s Academic Honors Program, Inman had a 3.524 grade point average in Finance and was a Dean’s List selection in five of his first seven semesters at Notre Dame. He will graduate on Sunday, May 19th. A 2001-02 alternate team captain, Inman was a member of the CCHA’s all-rookie team in 1999 and played for the United States’ Junior National Team. He was also a second round selection of the New York Rangers in the 1999 National Hockey League Entry Draft.
The Irish have had one player selected to the Verizon Academic all-American national team in five consecutive seasons (1996-2001).