Wednesday, February 9, 2022

PORTLAND, Ore. – Sixty-eight women’s basketball players put the student in student-athlete by earning selection to the 2021-22 GNAC Women’s Basketball All-Academic Team, presented by Barnes & Noble College.

Leading the way is a quartet of honorees who earned selection for the fourth time. Alaska Anchorage forward Tennae Voliva has a 4.00 GPA as a graduate student and a 3.89 undergraduate as a clinical psychology major. Voliva is averaging 11.3 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.

Central Washington senior forward Kassidy Malcolm is also among the four-time honorees. With a 4.00 GPA in CWU’s information and technology management graduate program, Malcolm had a 3.84 undergraduate GPA as a public relations major. One of the conference’s leading scorers, Malcolm is averaging 19 points and 6.5 rebounds per game.

The other four-time honorees are Western Washington guard Dani Iwami and Simon Fraser guard Kendal Sands. Iwami, who has a 3.66 GPA as an environmental studies major, contributed 8.2 points and 2.5 points per game and led the conference in three-point percentage before going down with an injury.

Sands, who has a 3.84 GPA as a kinesiology major, is sidelined this year with an injury of her own, but she shot 42 percent from the field and 41 percent from three-point range in 2019-20.

Aside from Voliva and Malcolm, two other GNAC athletes are carrying perfect 4.0 GPAs: Alaska guard Destiny Riemers, a freshman majoring in rural development, and Saint Martin’s guard Tierney DeDonatis, who is in a health care management graduate program. Montana State Billings senior forward Shannon Reny is just behind with a 3.99 GPA as a health and human performance major.

Seattle Pacific boasted the most honorees of any school with 10 Falcons selected to the team. Western Washington and MSUB each had eight student-athletes selected.

Among the 68 selected, 35 were repeat selections, which includes the four four-time honorees and 10 three-time honorees: MSUB’s Taryn Shelley and Reny, Claire Dingus and Emma Wrede from Saint Martin’s, Seattle Pacific’s Rachel Berg and Natalie Hoff, Simon Fraser’s Claudia Hart and Sophie Klassen, Western Oregon’s Tresai McCarver and Western Washington’s Avery Dykstra.

To qualify for the GNAC All-Academic Teams, presented by Barnes & Noble College, nominees must be of sophomore eligibility or greater, have a minimum cumulative GPA or 3.20 or greater, be a letterwinner on their team and must be in their second year at the nominating institution. 

Thanks to eligibility waivers provided by the NCAA due to the cancellation of the 2020 season, players who continue to hold freshman eligibility but are in their second season of competition at the nominating institution were eligible for selection to the GNAC All-Academic Team.