UCSD male diver Luke Calkins and Queens women’s swimmer Kristin Diemer have been awarded the 2014 NCAA Elite 89 Awards for Division II Swimming & Diving.
This award is purely a statistically-based award. The NCAA awards it for each of its 89 championships to the (sophomore or older) student-athlete who has qualified to participate at the final championship site and has the highest GPA. That makes it fairly unique among most national academic awards for student-athletes that have some subjective component.
Calkins advanced from the unique Division II diving system past the pre-qualification meet on Tuesday, and therefore became eligible for the Elite 89 Award (the NCAA doesn’t count that pre-qualification meet as the “championship site.”
He won the award on the basis of his 3.947 GPA as a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, and is the 4th UCSD athlete in the 5-year history of the Elite 89 program to win the honor.
At the other end of the spectrum is Queens women’s swimmer Kristin Diemer: the first student-athlete in Queens history to earn this award. Diemer is a finance major.
Diemer is the 26th seed in the 50 free, the 18th seed in the 100 back, and the 34th seed in the 100 fly at this weekend’s NCAA Championship meet.
Congratulations to the awardees. Very impressive! Especially a 3.9+ GPA in mechanical engineering and making nationals too. That takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication!
Although it was not noted in this article, according to a later video interview of her coach on SwimSwam, Ms. Diemer had a 4.0 GPA in finance. That is especially impressive too!