College Lacrosse News – Guilford’s E’leyna Garcia Earns Prestigious Academic All-America Honor

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Guilford College’s E’leyna Garcia (Plantation, Fla./Pine Crest Prep) was elected to the NCAA Division III Capital One Academic All-America® At-Large Team by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Garcia, a second-team selection, is the Quakers’ seventh Capital One Academic All-American® in school history and their first since 2010.
Eâ??leyna Garcia 2014

To be eligible for Academic All-America® consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. The at-large squads are comprised of student-athletes in crew, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming, golf and tennis.

Since the program’s inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America ® honors on more than 18,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA, covering all NCAA championship sports.

Garcia recently completed the best women’s lacrosse season in school history and helped the Quakers rewrite the school record book. The 5-10 junior attacker earned Third Team All-America honors from SynapseSports.com and is the Quakers’ first women’s lacrosse All-American. She also received the Old Dominion Athletic Conference’s (ODAC) Women’s Lacrosse Player of the Year Award and was named First Team All-Chesapeake Region by the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches’ Association, both firsts for Guilford. Garcia also represented the Quakers on the ODAC/StellarOne Women’s Lacrosse Sportsmanship Team.

Garcia led NCAA Division III with an ODAC-record 99 goals and finished the year with 15 assists for 114 points, another Guilford standard and the nation’s 10th-highest figure. Garcia ranked second in Division III with 5.82 goals per game and fifth with 6.71 points per outing. Her 4.35 draw controls per contest stood 70th in the country and third in the league.

Garcia won three ODAC Player of the Week Awards, scored at least three goals in every game and totaled a league- and Guilford-best eight game-winning goals. Her school-record 10 tallies in wins over Greensboro College and Catawba College stood eighth in NCAA Division III this season. Garcia added an assist in the Catawba win and tied the Guilford mark with 11 points in the game.

Garcia shattered most of the school’s scoring standards this season and enters her final campaign with 201 goals and 258 points, both Guilford records. Her 201 career tallies stand 19th among active NCAA Division III leaders, third among juniors. The 2012 Second Team All-ODAC honoree has netted at least one goal in each of her 52 college games. Garcia also ranks fifth in school history with 137 career draw controls.

Off the field, Garcia carries a 3.66 grade point average as a dean’s list psychology major. She is three-time Academic All-ODAC honoree and was inducted into Guilford’s Scholarship Society this spring. Garcia mentors teen mothers at a local YWCA and recently received one of Guilford’s prestigious Dana Scholarships for academic achievement and leadership.

Guilford enjoyed the finest campaign in team history under first-year head coach Sarah Lamphier, a Second Team Academic All-America® At-Large selection in 2006 at Skidmore College. The Quakers ripped off a school-record 14-game winning streak and compiled a 15-2 overall record, the best at Guilford. Picked fifth in the league’s preseason poll, the team posted the ODAC’s first 10-0 conference mark. Guilford set or tied 15 school standards and earned the program’s first NCAA Division III South Region ranking. Lamphier could return as many as 13 letter winners in 2014, including Garcia.