Penn Sport_Spring08.indd - University of Penn Athletics

Softball Stunners GraduateIn 2008, the Quakers bid farewell to two of the best players ever to comethrough West Philadelphia. Annie Kinsey C’08 (pictured left) andChristina Khosravi C’08 (pictured right) already sat atop many Pennrecord lists before the season began, and they only cemented their legacieswith another tremendous year shoring up the middle of the infield for the Redand Blue.Kinsey, the unanimous 2007 Ivy League Player of the Year, went out with abang, ending the year on a red-hot tear that left her with a .404 average for theseason. She also slammed eight home runs, including one in each of the team’sfinal three games. With a two-homer game on April 13 against Cornell, she becamethe first Quaker ever to hit 20 home runs in a career. She ends her careerwith 24 round trippers, the team’s all-time leader, and became the first Quakerever to earn first-team All-Ivy honors all four years.Meanwhile, Khosravi, the 2006 and 2008 Ivy League Player of the Year,became just the fourth player in Ivy League history to win the award twice. Asecond-team Easton All-American and Academic All-Ivy selection, she was adangerous presence in the middle of the Penn lineup all season long. Finishingwith a .390 batting average, Khosravi led the Ivy League with a .548 on-basepercentage, more than 80 points ahead of the next closest competitor. Withan Ivy League Player of the Week honor to her credit this year, she slammed ateam-leading nine home runs, leaving her with 20 in her career.Fittingly, both seniors had one of their best games of the year on Senior Dayagainst Columbia. With five RBI in the final game, Khosravi ensured that theteammates would go down in history as the first Quakers ever to record 100RBI in a career. The game ended with a grounder to shortstop, where Khosraviflipped it to her double play partner Kinsey covering second, wrapping up arecord-setting win and a memorable season for Penn.Penn Finishes Fourth Nationally in NCAA Academic Progress ReportThe University of Pennsylvania and Ivy Leaguestudent-athletes as a whole again have thenation’s best records in the annual NCAA DivisionI Academic Progress Report (APR) ratingsfor enrollment from the 2003-04 through 2006-07 academic years, which the NCAA issued onApril 24.Now in its fourth year, the APR measures semester-by-semester records forevery individual team in Division I with regard to each team members’ continuingeligibility, retention and progress toward graduation. The APR awards twopoints each term to student-athletes who meet academic-eligibility standardsand who remain with the institution. A team’s APR is the total points earned bythe team at a given time, divided by the total points possible.A total of 20 Penn teams were “commended” by the NCAA. The NCAA “commends”teams that have APR scores in the top 10 percent within their sport,with the minimum necessary score ranging from 975 to a perfect mark of 1000depending on the range of team scores within that sport.“We are pleased so many of our teams received commended recognitionfrom the NCAA,” said Penn’s athletic director, Steve Bilsky W’71. “We impart onour coaches the importance of stressing the academic side as well as the athleticside, and clearly they are conveying that message in their own way withthe type of student-athletes they bring to Penn.”Of the Ivy League sports that are also NCAA sports, the conference has thenation’s top APR average in more than 65 percent of them (19 of 29). The 19sports are baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s crosscountry, football, men’s golf, men’s hockey, men’s lacrosse, men’s and women’ssoccer, softball, women’s swimming, women’s tennis, men’s and women’s indoortrack, men’s and women’s outdoor track, and volleyball.Seven other Ivy sports — men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, women’sgolf, women’s ice hockey, men’s swimming and men’s tennis — were secondnationally. Four Ivy sports — men’s heavyweight and lightweight rowing, aswell as men’s and women’s squash — are not NCAA Championship sports.Listed below are the Penn teams receiving commended recognition(2006-07 APR/Multiyear APR)Baseball (990/990)Field Hockey (1000/1000)Men’s Basketball (1000/984)Women’s Basketball (1000/992)Men’s Football (1000/993)Men’s Golf (1000/1000)Women’s Golf (1000/1000)Women’s Lacrosse (1000/1000)Men’s Soccer (1000/1000)Women’s Soccer (1000/994)Softball (1000/1000)Men’s Swimming (982/995)Women’s Swimming (1000/1000)Men’s Tennis (1000/995)Women’s Tennis (1000/1000)Men’s Track, Indoor (1000/997)Women’s Track, Indoor (1000/992)Men’s Track, Outdoor (1000/997)Women’s Track, Outdoor (1000/993)Wrestling (993/984)