CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (July 10, 2017) -- FIU Golf placed three on the All-American Scholar List, named by the Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) in July. Outgoing senior
Coralia Arias (Quito, Ecuador), along with rising sophomores
Carolina Rotzinger (Puebla, Mexico) and
Diana Velez (Dorado, Puerto Rico) were the three Panthers to make the grades for this season. In total, 952 women's collegiate golfers were recognized with this honor. The criteria for selection to the All-American Scholar Team are some of the most stringent in all of college athletics, with a minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.50.
"The thing I look for in a recruit is a balance," said FIU Head Coach Joe Vogel. "The ability to take care of the classroom is more important than the athletic side. I find that when they are good students, that can carry on through to the golf course, and I stress that to them when we talk with players about attending FIU. I am encouraged that a pair of freshmen were able to achieve this good start to their careers. It shows a lot of maturity on their part. Coralia is my first golfer to win this award four-straight times.
Arias reached over 100 total rounds played for the Panthers at the Conference USA Championships at the end of the season. She had the third-lowest stroke average on the team as a senior (76.26), and played in all 10 events for FIU. She graduated with a degree in marketing with better than a 3.70 GPA. She was a Dean's List honoree six times and a three-time C-USA Academic Honor Roll member.
Rotzinger is earning her first academic award following her freshman campaign. She also played all 28 rounds for the Panthers to begin her collegiate career, posting a 76.86 stroke average. Her low round of 70 in October at the Johnie Imes Invitational in Missouri was the fourth-lowest score posted by a Panther for the season, the lowest from the large freshman class.
Velez finished right behind Rotzinger in stroke average, at 77.61 in all 10 tournaments. She also went low in Missouri, firing a 1-under 71 for her best collegiate round. The two freshmen helped FIU finish third in the 15-team field in the second tournament of the season.
"I must give credit to our folks in the Student-Athlete Academic Center (SAAC)," added Vogel. "We have tremendous support staff for academics here at FIU, and they give the golfers every chance to succeed in the classroom. It is harder when we travel, since we are gone for four or five days at a time, to keep up with the academic load, but the seniors do a great job to show the youngers players how to thrive in that environment."
The 2017-18 Panthers will begin this season at the Marilynn Smith/Sunflower Invitational, co-hosted by Kansas and Kansas State in mid-September.
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About the Women's Golf Coaches Association: The Women's Golf Coaches Association, founded in 1983, is a non-profit organization representing women's collegiate golf coaches. The WGCA was formed to encourage the playing of college golf for women in correlation with a general objective of education and in accordance with the highest tradition of intercollegiate competition. Today, the WGCA represents over 600 coaches throughout the U.S. and is dedicated to educating, promoting and recognizing both its members and the student-athletes they represent.
About FIU Athletics: FIU Athletics is home to more than 400 student-athletes in 18 different sports. Athletic events are played in eight different venues on FIU's campuses (Modesto A. Maidique and Biscayne Bay), including Lime Court at FIU Arena and Riccardo Silva Stadium.
About FIU: Florida International University is classified by Carnegie as a "R1: Doctoral Universities - Highest Research Activity" and recognized as a Carnegie Community Engaged university. It is a public research university with colleges and schools that offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs in fields such as business, engineering, computer science, international relations, architecture, law and medicine. As one of South Florida's anchor institutions, FIU contributes almost $9 billion each year to the local economy and is ranked second in Florida in Forbes Magazine's "America's Best Employers" list. FIU graduates are consistently among the highest paid college graduates in Florida and are among the leaders of public and private organizations throughout South Florida. FIU is Worlds Ahead in finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission with multiple state-of-the-art research facilities including the Wall of Wind Research and Testing Facility, FIU's Medina Aquarius Program and the Advanced Materials Engineering Research Institute. FIU has awarded more than 220,000 degrees and enrolls more than 54,000 students in two campuses and centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell, FIU@I-75, the Miami Beach Urban Studios, and Tianjin, China. FIU also supports artistic and cultural engagement through its three museums: Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU, and the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. FIU is a member of Conference USA and more than 400 student-athletes participating in 18 sports. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.
