Tartans Celebrate 2023-24 Year at Annual Banquet

The Carnegie Mellon University Department of Athletics hosted its annual awards banquet on Wednesday, May 1 to celebrate the year and the accomplishments of the senior student-athletes. The event was hosted in Simmons Auditorium followed by a reception in the PNC Foundation Room located in the Tepper Quad.

The program began with a procession of senior athletes who were given their graduation sashes and posed together at the front of the room for a standing ovation from the crowd of coaches, athletics administrators, heads of academic departments, and other special guests.

Director of Athletics Josh Centor spoke to the crowd congratulating the senior on their numerous accomplishments throughout their four years in a Carnegie Mellon uniform. He went on and praised the seniors for their responsiveness to adversity.

Following Centor’s remarks, a select number of seniors were mentioned for their completion of the Tartan Leaders of Tomorrow program. A program in which Carnegie Mellon Student-Athletes evolve as leaders through engaging speakers, thoughtful discussion, campus outreach, engagement, and proactive mentorship.

Two student speakers were invited to share their thoughts with their graduating class as men’s basketball player R.J. Holmes and women’s golfer Alexis Sudjianto engaged the crowd with memories of their student-athlete experiences.

The Tartans Faculty Athletics Representative, Rebecca Nugent handed out the Dr. William Brown Academic Athletic Achievement Awards. The award was renamed in honor of the Tartans’ first-ever NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative, William Brown, following his passing in 2007 and goes to a men’s sports and women’s sports four-year participant who has earned the highest grade-point average while participating in intercollegiate athletics.

Like in many years past, this year’s graduating class has more than two earning the award. There were two men’s sports recipients that each have a 4.0 grade point average as the award winners were Dustin Moss (football) and Pranav Rajbhandari (men’s track and field). The women had three sports recipients with each holding a 4.0 grade point average as well. The women award winners were JoJo Huczko (women’s track and field), Erika Iizuka (women’s swimming and diving) and Ruby Redlich (women’s swimming and diving).

Moss will graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering and robotics and will be working at Lockheed Martin as a Mechanical Propulsion Engineer in Denver, Colorado. Pranav will graduate with a degree in artificial intelligence and mathematics and is still deciding on his options.

Huczko will graduate with a degree in ethics, history, and public policy and is still deciding on her options. Iizuka will graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, as she will be working at Procter & Gamble in North Carolina as a Product Design Engineer, before returning to CMU and graduating in December with a master’s in mechanical engineering. Redlich will graduate with a degree in computational biology and will be going to Princeton to pursue a PhD in Computational Biology.

Dean of Students Gina Casalegno presented the Michael C. Murphy Citizenship Award to Iizuka. The award is given to a senior student-athlete that has demonstrated character, sportsmanship, service and impact on the university during his or her time at Carnegie Mellon.

Iizuka was significantly involved in student-athlete life and community initiatives while at Carnegie Mellon. As a member of our Student-Athlete Advisory Council, Iizuka led first-year student-athlete orientation to help welcome the newest Tartans to campus. She was involved in Council initiatives such as Field Day, Be the Match and the Thanksgiving Basket Drive. Iizuka was also heavily involved in the planning of the Special Olympics, as she worked directly with Special Olympics of Pennsylvania to coordinate the swimming competition for the athletes.

Outside of her athletics involvement, Erica served as vice president of Pi Tau Sigma, the Mechanical Engineering Honor Society. She coordinated and volunteered at outreach events with the Crossroads and Mount Ararat Community Centers to teach a group of nearly 100 children about engineering.

Head swimming and diving coach Matt Kinney shared that “Erica is an incredible leader, mentor and student-athlete at every level. She is the first to help when others are in need, volunteers with multiple organizations on campus and off, and is an incredible leader for the teams.”

Prior to the last two awards of the event, Senior Associate Director of Athletics and Senior Woman Administrator, Kim Kelly announced each team’s annual Tartan Awards. The awards were presented separately at team functions and are based on program-specific criteria developed by each head coach. Below is a list of the Tartan Award winners in each sport:

The final awards of the evening then were presented to the outstanding senior athletes. Earning the award for men’s sports was basketball athlete R.J. Holmes and for women’s sports was Liz Barre of track field.

Holmes, a three-time All-University Athletic Association selection, was the UAA Sophomore Rookie of the Year in 2022. This past season, Holmes scored in double-figures in 20 of the team’s 26 games and was second in the UAA in rebounding with 8.5 boards per game. He led the team to its first NCAA appearance since 2009 and scored his 1,000th point and grabbed his 500th career rebound during the season. Holmes is seventh on the all-time blocks list and 10th on the all-time rebounding list, despite playing just two official games his first season due to the pandemic. Holmes plans to pursue his graduate degree in mechanical engineering next year.

Barre, Carnegie Mellon’s first individual national champion in 16 years, became the first Tartan to win an indoor track and field national title when she placed first in the pentathlon last winter. She is a five-time All-American, having scored at NCAA meets in the pentathlon and high jump. Narre holds indoor school records in the 60-meter hurdles, long jump, high jump and pentathlon. She holds outdoor school records in the long jump, high jump and heptathlon. Barre is a nine-time UAA champion and an Academic All-American. Barre was honored for her national championship with the first pitch at a Pirates game this fall and threw a perfect strike. An All-American and Academic All-American, Barre will be working at Sargent and Lundy Baltimore following graduation, where she will be focused on improving power plant efficiency in their energy and industrial group.

Tartan Award winners in each sport:

Josiah Smith of Men’s Basketball (Thomas B. Craig (E’53) Tartan Award)
Jamie Joseph of Women’s Basketball (John N. Wiernicki Tartan Award)
Matthew Porter of Men’s Cross Country
Orit Shiang of Women’s Cross Country (Kelly Chin de Csepel (TPR’02) Tartan Award)
Kevin Cooke of Football; Defense (Walter H. and Antoinette V. Haupt Tartan Award)
Ethan Reifer of Football; Offense (Thomas B. Craig (E’53) Tartan Award)
Brian Xu of Men’s Golf (Thomas B. Craig (E’53) Tartan Award)
Alexis Sudjianto of Women’s Golf (Thomas B. Craig (E’53) and LaVerne Craig Tartan Award)
Luke Marolda of Men’s Soccer (W. Young Kang (E’92) Tartan Award)
Camila Bodden of Women’s Soccer (Jared L. (H’14) and Maureen B. Cohon Tartan Award)
Kiera Boucher of Softball (The Pierce Family Tartan Award)
Santiago Gomez and Tyler Hoyt of Men’s Swimming & Diving (Scott (TPR’88) and Lara Morrison Tartan Award)
Erica Iizuka of Women’s Swimming & Diving (Joseph (E’48) and Myrna Stein Tartan Award)
Chaitanya Irkar of Men’s Tennis (Michael H. Ference (DC’91, TPR’92) Tartan Award)
Sarah Yang of Women’s Tennis (Ellie (Wiseman) Ference (E’64) and Thomas P. Ference (E’64, TPR’66, ‘67) Tartan Award)
Thomas Rich of Men’s Track & Field; Field Events (Bram Miller (CIT’21, ’23) Tartan Award)
Jocelyn Kiefel of Women’s Track & Field; Field Events
Andrew McGovern of Men’s Track & Field; Running Events (Gary L. Meckley Tartan Award)
Liz Barre of Women’s Track & Field; Running Events (Dario Donatelli (TPR’81) Tartan Award)
Laura Reichard of Volleyball (Robert S. (DC’93) & Ann Feng Simon (TPR’93) Tartan Award)