Wednesday, February 15, 2006

POWERS NAMED TO ACADEMIC ALL-DISTRICT BASKETBALL TEAM

MEDFORD – Nearing the end of basketball career as one of the best to ever play for the Tufts University Jumbos, senior tri-captain Jessica Powers (Massapequa, NY/Massapequa) also recently received recognition as one of the top student-athletes in the Northeast.

Powers was named to ESPN The Magazine's 2006 Academic All-District Third Team. She is one of just two New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) players named to one of the three teams, joining second-team selection Hannah Stubbs from Wesleyan University. Fifteen players overall from New England and New York were honored.

The College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) selects Academic All-America teams in 12 programs: football, womens volleyball, men's soccer, women's soccer, mens basketball, womens basketball, baseball, softball, mens track & field/cross country, womens track & field/cross country, mens at-large and womens at-large. A first team, second team and third team are selected in both the University (Division I and I-AA) and College (Division II, III and NAIA) Divisions.

An Economics major with better than a 3.7 grade point average, Powers scored her 1,000th career point for Tufts at Wellesley College on December 10. Entering the team's first-round NESCAC Tournament game at Bowdoin on Saturday, she is fifth all-time in scoring for the Jumbos with 1,162 points. She is also among the top five on the Tufts career lists for three-pointers (107 – second) and assists (295 – fourth). She has started all 94 games during her Tufts career. The team has a 59-35 record during that time.

Powers is one of several outstanding student-athletes on Coach Carla Berube's Tufts team. Fellow tri-captains Kat Miller (Bangor, ME/Bangor) and Julia Verplank (Zeeland, MI/Zeeland), plus teammates Laura Jasinski (Leverett, MA/Amherst), Valerie Krah (Mountain Lakes, NJ/Mountain Lakes), Taryn Miller-Stevens (Avon, CT/Avon) and Marilyn Duffy-Cabana (Amesbury, MA/Amesbury) all have grade point averages of 3.25 or above.

Tufts is 10-12 overall this season. They finished the NESCAC regular-season with a 3-6 mark for seventh place.

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