ST. LOUIS – Sixteen Missouri Valley Conference volleyball student-athletes have been named to the 2013 MVC Scholar-Athlete First Team by a vote of the league's volleyball sports information directors. An additional eight student-athletes have earned honorable mention, the league office announced today.
 
This year's first team includes seven players that have received previous MVC volleyball scholar-athlete recognition, including five repeat first team honorees. One member of the first team boasts a perfect 4.00 GPA in UNI's Shelby Kintzel, and she was joined by Panther teammate Macy Ubben as the only two unanimous selections.
 
Ashley Ring earned First Team honors for the second year in a row while Rachel TenHoor earned the accolade for the first time.  Katie Klages was named an Honorable Mention.
 
Ring has posted a 3.853 GPA as a biology major.  She finished the season ranked fourth in the league, posting 3.40 kills per set while setting her career mark with 310 digs.  TenHoor established herself as one of the top hitters in the league while also getting the job done in the classroom.  The PT major has accumulated a 3.918 GPA in her time at UE and is coming off of a season that saw her set the all-time single season UE hitting record at .321.
 
Klages, a 3.382 Nursing student, had a record-setting career in her own right.  She set the career program record for digs while leading the Valley in that category.
 
Thirty-eight student-athletes were nominated for the Valley's scholar-athlete team. The criterion for the honor parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for Academic All-America voting. Nominees must be starters or important reserves with at least a 3.20 cumulative GPA (on a 4.00 scale). Also, students must have participated in at least 75 percent of the regular-season matches. Student-athletes must have reached sophomore status in both athletic and academic standing at their institution (true freshmen and redshirt freshmen were not eligible).