Tuesday, May 30, 2023

PORTLAND, Ore. – For the second straight trip to the NCAA Division II Rowing Championships, Western Washington senior Clarice Ruhlin-Hicks is the recipient of the NCAA Elite 90 Award.

The Elite 90 Award is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships. Ties are broken by the number of credits completed by each student-athlete.

A two-time First Team All-GNAC selection, Ruhlin-Hicks rowed in the stroke seat for the Vikings’ varsity 8+ at the NCAA Championships and was part of the crew that won the petite final last weekend. She was also in the stroke seat for WWU at the GNAC Championships.

With a 4.0 GPA as a political science major, Ruhlin-Hicks was one of three GNAC student-athletes with a perfect 4.0 named to the GNAC All-Academic Team. She is a three-time GNAC All-Academic selection and was also named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District At-Large Team.

Western Washington placed third at the GNAC Championships and finished fourth at the NCAA Division II Championships.

The award for Ruhlin-Hicks marks the eighth time that a GNAC student-athletes have received the Elite 90 Award since its inception for the 2010-11 championship season. Past winners include Northwest Nazarene’s Ben Johnson (baseball, 2021), Alaska Anchorage’s Marie Ries (women’s indoor track and field, 2020) and Yvonne Jeschke (women’s cross country, 2019); Western Oregon’s Tyler Jones (men’s cross country, 2018), Central Washington’s Alexa Shindruk (women’s cross country, 2018) and Seattle Pacific’s Suzie Strickler (women’s cross country, 2010).

It also marks the sixth time that a student-athlete with a rowing program now affiliated with the GNAC to win the Elite 90 award and the second to win the award twice. She joins Western Washington’s Megan Northey (2012), Cal Poly Humboldt’s Mariah Smither (2015 & 2016) and Central Oklahoma’s Trista Cripe (2017 & 2018) and Bailee Thomas (2019).