Senior Kelly Nugent of the Bentley women's tennis team has been named the Division II national recipient of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Arthur Ashe Jr. Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship. The national award winner is selected from the eight regional award winners that were announced last week.
Nugent was the East Region's winner. The award is given annually to a player who has exhibited outstanding sportsmanship and leadership as well as scholastic, extracurricular and tennis achievements.
Nugent capped her collegiate career with a stellar senior season. She posted a 19-3 overall singles record, including a perfect 12-0 run through the Northeast-10 Conference to earn first-team All-Conference honors, and went 10-9 in doubles play. A team captain for two years, Nugent earned three All-Conference selections in singles and two in doubles over her three-year career. A management major with a 3.53 grade point average, she was also a first-team NE-10 All-Academic selection each of her three seasons on the team.
Outdoor Track
Nash, Ramirez picked for NCAAs
Bentley track standouts Melissa Nash and Stephan Ramirez have been accepted to participate in the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field Championships, which will be held in Walnut, California next Thursday through Saturday.
Ramirez, a senior, will compete in the 1500 meters on Thursday at 7:35 p.m. EST, and Nash, a junior, will run in the 3,000 meters a little more than two hours later, at 9:50 p.m. The 3000 finals will be at 8:25 pm on Friday and the 1500 finals will be run at 9 p.m. on Saturday.
Nash, the first Bentley woman to compete in the NCAAs outdoors since 2002, is seeded 13th of 16 with a time of 10:07.38. She'll be making her third trip to a national championship, having competed in the NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships each of the last two years.
Ramirez, who'll be making his third trip to an NCAA championship (indoors in 2006, cross country in 2007), is the No. 9 seed in a 16-man field, with a time of 3:49.70, a mark he posted back in March at the Texas Relays. It'll be the first time since 2005 that the Bentley men will have an entrant in the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track Championships.
Field Hockey
King named head coach
Following nine years at Lasell College, Jessica King is returning to her alma mater, Bentley College, as head field hockey coach, Athletics Director Bob DeFelice announced today.
King, a 1997 Bentley graduate and former two-time first-team Division II All-America, started the Lasell program from scratch after spending two years as an assistant coach at Bentley (1997-98). Her most successful season with the Lasers came in 2004 when her team finished at 11-8. In 2006, she was named the North Atlantic Conference co-Coach of the Year.
``Jessica's time here as a player and her experience in developing the Lasell program from scratch made her an outstanding selection to continue the success of such a prestigious program,'' said DeFelice.
Bentley has been in the NCAA tournament eight times since 1999, has reached the Division II national championship game six times over that span, and was the NCAA national champion in 2001.
King played four seasons as a midfielder for the Falcons from 1993-96, helping the team to a four-year record of 40-33-5. She was selected to the National Field Hockey Coaches Association Division II All-America team in both 1995 and 1996, and as a senior, was chosen as the first Northeast-10 Conference Player of the Year.
King also played softball at Bentley for three years, earning the team MVP award in 1997.
``I am extremely excited to be part of the Bentley College field hockey program again,'' said King.
King, a native of Athol who now resides in Newton with her husband Greg, also served as an Assistant Director of Athletics and Sports Information Director at Lasell. She received her BA from Bentley in marketing and her Masters of Science Degree in management, with a concentration in marketing, from Lasell (2006).
