Rohn heads Academic All-America Team

Lehigh’s Rob Rohn heads the list of the 2002 National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) Division I wrestling academic teams. NCAA champions Rohn and Joe Heskett of Iowa State lead the individual academic awards as members of the first team. Rohn, the NCAA champion at 184 lbs., compiled a 3.62 grade point average in accounting, while champion Heskett (165 lbs.) is a 3.27 student in speech communication.

The other members of the first team include Iowa’s Jessman Smith, the Michigan duo of Erick Otto Olson and Ryan Bertin, Owen Elzen of Minnesota, Nebraska’s Brian Snyder, Northern Illinois’ Scott Owen, and Greg Parker of Princeton. Olson, Elzen and Snyder are repeat performers on the first team.

Each year the NWCA honors its Academic Top 25 Division I wrestling teams, as well as a first, second, third and honorable mention All-Academic teams. Sacred Heart University captured honors as being the top ranked academic wrestling team with a team GPA 3.4. The Pioneers were closely followed by Duquesne University with a 3.393 GPA, followed by Stanford University (3.375), Princeton University (3.365) and Central Michigan (3.23). Rounding out the top ten teams in order were: Brown University, Harvard University, Lock Haven University, Columbia University and Lehigh University. Team rankings were selected by taking the average GPA of each team’s starting ten wrestlers along with two backups that wrestled in at least one varsity match. The average grade point average of the top 25 teams was 3.071.

The University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan each placed three wrestlers on the All-Academic Team. The team features wrestlers from 32 universities, 38 NCAA qualifiers, and 17 All-Americans.

Mike Moyer, Executive Director of the NWCA commented, the results of the 2002 NWCA Academic All-American Rankings confirms the NWCA's belief that many of our nations top collegiate wrestlers are committed to the highest level of achievement in the classroom as well as the wrestling mat. These results demonstrate that the sport of wrestling is building leaders for life as many of these athletes will go on to be our leaders of tomorrow.

Click HERE to see the entire Individual Academic All-American Teams

NWCA Top 25 All-Academic Wrestling Team

1 Sacred Heart University 3.4

2 Duquesne University 3.393

3 Stanford University 3.375

4 Princeton University 3.365

5 Central Michigan University 3.23

6 Brown University 3.2

7 Harvard University 3.187

8 Lock Haven University 3.126

9 Columbia University 3.117

10 Lehigh University 3.092

11 Penn State University 3.086

12 Michigan State University 2.98

13 University of Pennsylvania 2.975

14 Cleveland State 2.97

University of Iowa 2.97

16 University of Michigan 2.967

17 James Madison University 2.954

18 University of Illinois 2.944

University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2.944

20 Indiana University 2.935

21 University of Oklahoma Sooners 2.934

22 Eastern Michigan University 2.92

23 Millersville University 2.919

24 Northwestern University 2.918

25 Oklahoma State University 2.887