Zheng One of Four to Earn CoSIDA Academic All-District At-Large Honors

(PITTSBURGH, Pa.) – Four Carnegie Mellon University athletes were recognized by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) on the 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-District Men's and Women's At-Large Teams. Senior men's golfer George Qian (Bettendorf, Iowa/Montverde Academy) earns the award for the third time while senior men's tennis player Kenny Zheng (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley Central), senior women's tennis player Nicholle Torres (Weston, Fla./Great Neck South) and junior women's swimmer Kim Hochstedler (Mishawaka, Ind./Penn) receive the honor for the first time.

In order to be nominated, a student-athlete must maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.300 and be a significant contributor to the team. Carnegie Mellon is part of District 4 which is comprised of all Division III schools in the state of Pennsylvania. All four athletes now move on to the national ballot for Academic All-America recognition.

Zheng compiled a singles record of 19-7 and a doubles mark of 25-6 for the men's tennis team that was ranked seventh in the nation throughout the season. He was named the University Athletic Association (UAA) Athlete of the Week twice and earned placement on the UAA All-Tournament team at fourth singles. He finished his career with a 71-31 singles mark and a 58-23 doubles mark.

Zheng carries a 3.86 GPA in business administration and is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and SAAC.

Qian, a two-time PING All-American, was recently named a semifinalist for the Jack Nicklaus National Player of the Year Award and finished the season with a team-best average round of 74.0 through 21 rounds with a tournament win, three top-three finishes and five top-ten finishes. The senior opened spring play claiming UAA Most Valuable Player honors at the 2017 UAA Match-Play Championships after winning both of his matches. At the Wynlakes Intercollegiate in late March, Qian tied the single-round school record with his opening-round score of five-under par 67. He finished the Wynlakes with a two-round score of seven-under par 137, which broke the school record for the lowest 36-hole event. His play to start the spring earned him Division III Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Men's Golfer of the Month for March. He and the men's golf team were awarded an at-large bid to the 2017 NCAA Championships and begin play in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, on May 16.

Off the course, Qian maintains a 3.84 GPA in business administration and is a member of the Student-Athletic Advisory Council (SAAC), has been an active member with the team which volunteers with The First Tee of Pittsburgh and assisted with the golf portion of the Western Pennsylvania Spring Sectionals of the Special Olympics.

Torres plays number one singles and doubles for the No. 10 women's tennis team where she's recorded an 18-10 singles mark and 14-15 doubles mark this season against 15 nationally ranked teams. She's led the Tartans to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in her career and will play in the NCAA Singles Championship for the second time later in May. Her career singles record currently stands at 75-32 while her doubles record is 63-43.

Away from the court, Torres is a business administration major with a 3.72 GPA who was a summer analyst for J.P. Morgan and will be working for PNC Bank after graduation. She's a three-year member of SAAC and served as the events chair this year. Torres is also a member of Delta Gamma Sorority, is a finance teaching assistant, volunteers with Buddy Up and Special Olympics and serves on the career and professional development center's advisory committee.

Hochstedler is an Honorable Mention All-American for the women's swimming and diving team who has competed on the national stage twice. This season she set the school record in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:18.06 which seeded her seventh at the NCAA Championships.

Hochstedler maintains a 4.00 GPA in statistics and psychology while holding the role of community service chair for SAAC. She's volunteered to help run the aquatics venue for Special Olympics twice and has been an outreach coordinator and counselor at Camp Kesem. She's been a two-year student researcher in social psychology, a data analysis intern for CMU's Software Engineering Institute and will intern with National Institutes of Health in the epidemiology branch this summer.