Altavilla, Bemis Tabbed Pete Nevins Scholar-Athletes of the Year
Lock Haven, Pa. - The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference is pleased to announce Mercyhurst’s
Dan Altavilla and Edinboro’s
Tabitha Bemis as its 2013-14 Pete Nevins Scholar-Athletes of the Year. Altavilla and Bemis were selected by the league's sports information directors.
The Pete Nevins Scholar-Athletes of the Year are presented to the top student-athletes who have achieved at least a 3.50 cumulative grade point average while competing at an outstanding athletic level. To be eligible for the Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards, a student-athlete must have been recognized as a fall, winter or spring PSAC Top 10 award winner in the same academic year.
Altavilla, a sports medicine/pre-physical therapy major with a 3.70 grade point average, was a baseball Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-America First Team selection as well as being the inaugural winner of the Brett Tomko Award given to Division II’s most outstanding pitcher. He was named the ABCA/Rawlings Division II National Pitcher of the Year, and the Daktronics’ Ron Lenz Division II National Pitcher of the Year, while being a First Team All-American from ABCA/Rawlings, Daktronics, and NCBWA. In 12 starts this season he accumulated nine wins and established a 1.23 ERA. He led Division II with 129 strikeouts to set a new Mercyhurst season standard and limited opponents to a .167 batting average. Altavilla broke a 99 year-old PSAC record when he tossed 19 strikeouts in 7.2 innings of work in the opening game of the PSAC Championship against West Chester. Altavilla was drafted in the fifth round and 141st overall in the Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft by the Seattle Mariners, marking the highest draft pick in Mercyhurst history.
Bemis, a sports and recreation major with a 3.92 grade point average, was a two-time All-American at the
2014 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field National Championships, making her a six-time All-American (four indoor, two outdoor). She is a two-time PSAC Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year and a three-time PSAC Indoor Field Athlete of the Year, as she has won 15 PSAC Championship titles in her career. This season she placed fifth in the triple jump (43’ 3 ¼”) at the NCAA Outdoor National Championship and eighth in the long jump (19’ 9”). At the indoor championship she placed second in the long jump (19’ 8 ¼”) and seventh in the triple jump (40’ 9 ¾”). Bemis is the first-ever PSAC athlete to be named to six PSAC Top 10 rosters, and is a three-time Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-American.
The PSAC Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards are now in their 24th year of existence. In 2007 the awards were renamed to honor East Stroudsburg's long-time sports information director, Pete Nevins, who passed away earlier that year. Nevins held his position at East Stroudsburg for 33 years and it is estimated that he wrote articles on more than 12,000 East Stroudsburg events that covered more than 5,000 student-athletes.