Brandywine Announces End-Of-Year Athletic Awards

MEDIA, Pa. -- The Penn State Brandywine athletic department honored over 100 student-athletes with academic and athletic awards during its annual end-of-year banquet on Sunday.

Included among the academic award winners were 102 PSUAC All-Academic Team selections and 12 USCAA National Academic Team honorees. Twelve student-athletes were selected as USCAA All-Americans, while 33 garnered All-PSUAC awards, including four conference players of the year and three newcomers of the year.

Additionally, the department handed out its three major awards: the James King Memorial Award, the Michael W. Menichini Memorial Award and the Lloyd Vernon Heart of a Lion Award.

This year's recipient of the Michael W. Menichini Award was student affairs staff assistant Monica Woutersz. The Menichini Award recognizes an individual or office on campus that displays dedication and service to Penn State Brandywine athletics throughout the year.

Baseball sophomore Kevin Roche received the James King Memorial Award as Brandywine's top student-athlete. A finance major, Roche has been accepted to Penn State's Smeal College of Business where he will begin studying next fall after earning a 3.98 grade-point average in two years at Brandywine. Roche was also a .280 hitter and defensive standout at shortstop in 31 games for the Lions this spring.

The Lloyd Vernon Heart of a Lion Award is named in honor of late tennis coach Lloyd Vernon. A proud Penn Stater, Coach Vernon battled cancer for nearly his entire tenure at Brandywine, while still maintaining two of the top teams in the conference and teaching tennis classes to Brandywine students. Coach Vernon devoted his time and energy to the program and the athletic department and truly showed the heart of a lion during his time at Brandywine.

Members of Coach Vernon's family were on hand to deliver the award to women's basketball senior Chelsea Dent. Dent worked her way through Brandywine's provisional program to compete for the team during the second semester as a freshman. She was selected as one of the team's captains prior to the 2016-17 season and helped lead Brandywine to the PSUAC championship and earn a berth at the USCAA Tournament.