Rutgers News & Notes: Mid-July Edition

The dog days of summer are officially here and while it’s the offseason for college athletics, there continues to be plenty of news regarding Rutgers. It’s easy to miss it during this time of year, so here is a summary of news that broke this past week. To read about everything that came out last week, click here.

Big Ten announces a Rutgers Record 87 Distinguished Scholars

Rutgers student-athletes continue to excel in the classroom, as a record amount earned distinguished scholar status for this past school year. From the Rutgers press release, in order to achieve such status, student-athletes “must have earned Academic All-Big Ten recognition in the previous academic year, must have been enrolled full time for the entire previous academic year (two semesters or three quarters) and earned a minimum GPA of 3.70 or better during the previous academic year.”

The release stated the following student-athletes achieved distinguished scholar status for the third time in their careers while maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA: Field hockey’s Nicole Profita, women’s soccer’s Adora Moneme, men’s soccer’s Brian Shushkovsky, swimming’s Francesca Stoppa and track & field’s Christopher Mirabelli.

In addition, women’s golf was named the top academic performer within Rutgers athletics, as the team GPA was an impressive 3.78. To read more, click here.

Three from Rutgers Swim & Dive Successful at World University Games

As I mentioned last week, recent graduate Vera Koprivova, rising senior Federica Greco and rising sophomore Terka Grusova were competing at this week’s World University Games in Napoli, Italy. All three earned three individual top 16 finishes across various swimming events. To read about how each student-athlete fared, click here.

Rutgers head coach Jon Maccoll served as an assistant for the Czech Republic, which was who Kopripova and Grusova swam for. Greco represented host country Italy. Of the experience, Maccoll said the following:

“I’m extremely proud of our women for their performances during a grueling, eight-day meet on an international stage,” Maccoll said. “Everyone back home can be proud of the way our women represented Rutgers and their countries. These are the results we have come to expect with the culture of excellence we have been building. ”It was an honor to be an assistant coach for the Czech team,” Maccoll added. “I would like to thank the Czech Swimming Federation for being a first-class organization and for hosting me.”

Sarah Johanek Qualifies For U-23 National Team

The 2019 graduate who earned First Team All-American honors, a Big Ten Medal of Honor recipient and was recently nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year earned a spot on the USA under-23 National Team this past week. She has had an amazing year to complete a fantastic career at Rutgers.

Field Hockey News

Something I missed last week was that Rutgers field hockey players Gianna Glatz and Clayre Smith were invited to training camp for the USA under-21 National Team.

Glatz was a major reason for the program’s success last season and earned First Team All-Big Ten honors during her sophomore campaign. Smith sat out last season after transferring from Penn State and will have the opportunity to make a significant contribution to the team this coming season.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I learned this past week that the best offensive player from last year’s team, Daphne Groothuis, had previously left the program and leaves a huge void to fill this coming season.

The Scarlet Knights also lost Linda van Schaik and Nikki Profita to graduation, so the top three scorers from last year’s squad are now gone. Even so, there is still plenty of talent on the current roster, as six players, including Glatz and Smith, were invited and took part in last month’s 2019 Young Women’s National Championship. You can read about the event here. Rutgers will look to make its second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance this fall.

Rutgers Volleyball Schedule Released

The fall sports are just weeks away from beginning and the volleyball team released its 2019 schedule this past week. The home slate is in the below tweet and to read about the complete schedule, click here.

Jon Rothstein profiles Rutgers Men’s Basketball

National college basketball analyst and writer, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports, visited a summer practice/workout this past week and shared a few observations on Twitter.

As we expected, there are plenty of options for head coach Steve Pikiell to deploy this coming season, which will lead to multiple lineup combinations and create matchup problems for opponents.

After making sure I wasn’t suffering heat stroke, I soon realized we had respected national basketball scribe declaring the Big Ten would be wide open after the top four this season and Rutgers had a chance to be a major player in the conference. And Rothstein’s tweet led BTN senior producer Brent Yarina to double down on his optimistic view of Rutgers, which he shared earlier this offseason.

From your lips to God’s ears, Brent. FYI, we have plans for coverage for Rutgers basketball’s trip to Spain next month, so stay tuned.

Rutgers Women’s Soccer Involved in USWNT World Cup Title Parade

On Wednesday, assistant and director of operations Tricia Dipaolo was part of CBS New York’s coverage of the parade celebrating the US National Women’s Soccer World Cup victory.

Later that night, Rutgers legend Carli Lloyd took the mic on behalf of the team at the ESPY’s. Watch the video in the below tweet:

Football Showing Gains in Weight Room

Director of Recruiting Communications & Assistant Director Player Personnel Matt Hewitt posted several videos on Twitter on Thursday of players bench pressing max weight under the supervision of Kenny Parker. There were some impressive marks achieved and we can only hope the gains made in the weight room will translate to significant improvement on the field this season. Here are the six videos that Hewitt tweeted:

Nick Krimin

Isaih Pacheco

Tyreek Maddox-Williams

Tre Avery

Willington Previlon

Monterio Hunt

Rutgers Athletics Points of Pride

The athletic department released its annual “Points of Pride” on Thursday, detailing many accomplishments across many sports and areas of development at Rutgers this past school year. To read about all the positive achievements, click here.

In Memoriam: RIP Danny Garofalo

We covered the passing of Rutgers superfan Danny Garofalo last year, but watch this video on the one year anniversary of his death. Rest in peace, Danny!