FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
S-98-02-03
Friday, May 23, 2003

Elizabethtown College's Mindy Nace Named to Verizon Academic All-District First Team

ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. --- Recent Elizabethtown College alumna and field hockey player Mindy Nace (Thompsontown, PA/East Juniata) is one of ten student-athletes named to the Verizon Academic All-District II College Division Women's At-Large First Team. By earning a spot on the first team, Nace advances to the national ballot for the Verizon Academic All-America Women's At-Large Team, which will be announced Thursday, June 12.

In her four-year field hockey career, Nace, a forward, was twice named to the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association (NFHCA) All-South Atlantic Region Second Team, in 2000 and 2002, and she was also an All-Commonwealth Conference Second Team member in 2000 and 2002 as well. Through her four years, the field hockey team posted a 44-31 record, was nationally ranked for the better part of two seasons, and it has now made the conference playoffs for three consecutive years.

Over the course of her field hockey career, she tallied 21 goals, 17 assists and 59 points, and she led the team in assists with eight in 2002.

A biology and pre-medicine major at Elizabethtown College, Nace graduated last weekend and plans to further her studies at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, PA with a possible concentration in orthopedics and surgery.

Nace has served as an emergency ward waiting room volunteer at Lewistown (PA) Hospital, and she spent August 2001 on a self-organized and funded stay as a volunteer on a pediatrics ward at the Centro De Pediatria Albina R. De Patino in Cochabama, Bolivia, where she assisted residents in examinations, the administration of medications, and helped out wherever needed.

She spent the summer of 2002 in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Pittsburgh, PA, and she was selected to participate in the Penn State College of Medicine's Primary Care Scholars' Program in May of 2002. She was a Pennsylvania State University Life Sciences Consortium Fellow in the summer of 2001.

At Elizabethtown, she has served as the field hockey team's captain and Student Athlete Advisory Committee representative. She was also a member of both the Biology Club and the Medicus Club at Elizabethtown College, as well as a member of Alpha Lambda Delta, a national freshman honor society, and of Beta Beta Beta, a national biology honor society of which she is currently the secretary for Elizabethtown's chapter.

Nace was also an Elizabethtown College Scholar, a designation for which a student must have completed sixty credit hours and have a cumulative grade point average of 3.75 or higher. Nace was also a member of the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association (NFHCA) National Academic Squad and a three-time member of the Middle Atlantic Conferences' Academic Honor Roll. She also recently became just one of 29 women's fall sports participants across all NCAA Divisions nationwide to receive the prestigious NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship.

To be nominated for the Verizon Academic All-America program, a student-athlete must be at least a sophomore with a 3.2 or higher cumulative grade-point average and be a starter or a significant reserve. The teams are selected by the members of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

The District II College Division consists of all non-NCAA Division I colleges and universities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. The women's at-large program includes all athletes competing in the varsity sports of crew, gymnastics, skiing, fencing, ice hockey, swimming, water polo, field hockey, lacrosse, tennis, golf and rifle.