ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College junior Trey Bennett has been named a 2009 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Spring Top 10 Award Winner, as announced by conference officials today.
The PSAC Top 10 Awards, which are selected by the league's sports information directors, recognize student-athletes who excel in both the classroom and in the area of competition. The PSAC Top 10 Awards are in their 12th season of existence, having been initiated in the 1997-98 academic year., and recognize 10 outstanding student-athletes, five male and five female, for each athletic season: fall, winter and spring.
Bennett owns a 3.851 GPA in multi-disciplinary studies with a pre-law concentration. The leftfielder played in 49 of Lakers 55 contests and had 47 starts, helping Lakers to a PSAC West title and their first NCAA berth since 2000. He also helped the Lakers advance to the championship game of the Atlantic Regional, another first for Mercyhurst as it went 3-2 in regional play, earning more wins than the team's victory total in postseason play overall. The right-handed slugger finished with a .291 batting average and drove in 49 runs, good for fifth on the squad along with his 21 walks. He posted 12 multiple-hit games, including three with three or more hits while hitting .320 in the postseason, the fifth-best total on the team.
"Trey is a tremendously gifted student-athlete," says Lakers' 10th-year head baseball coach Joe Spano. "He pushes himself not only in the athletic arena but in the classroom as well. Balancing the two worlds is not necessarily an easy task, but Trey really exemplifies the definition of student-athlete."
Bennett is the third Mercyhurst student-athlete to win a Top 10 Award after football's Bryan Boyce and women's soccer's Taylor Hilinski earned the honors in the fall.
PSAC Spring 2009 Top 10 Awards
Trey Bennett, Mercyhurst (baseball)
Chris Clark, California (men's outdoor track & field)
Mary Dell, Shippensburg (women's outdoor track & field)
Bill Hezel, East Stroudsburg (baseball)
Priscilla Jennings, Millersville (women's outdoor track & field)
Kassie Leuschel, Clarion (women's tennis)
Kristen Morby, East Stroudsburg (women's outdoor track & field)
Ryan Mostyn, IUP (baseball)
Sonia Petrosoniak, California (softball)
Paul Wagner, East Stroudsburg (men's outdoor track & field)