Media Release May 27
Ewing, NJ – The College of New Jersey’s senior first baseman William Kropp (Pottstown, PA/Owen J. Roberts) has been named to the 2008 CoSIDA ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America College Division Second Team for his outstanding play on the field and excellence in the classroom.
Kropp becomes the fourth baseball player in program history to achieve this honor, while TCNJ has now produced 49 student-athletes that have earned CoSIDA Academic All-America citations. He follows in the footsteps of former Lion baseball players, Jeff Nevitt (1989 and 1991), Howard Forman (1992) and Dave Ceccanechio (1998) to have earned CoSIDA Academic All-America honors while wearing a Lion baseball uniform.
Kropp, who was a second team ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District Team honoree a year ago, started 37 games for the Lions and excelled at first base in 2008. He earned NJAC All-Star Honorable Mention honors and the Senior Award from the NJCBA after capping his career at TCNJ. He finished the 2008 season with a .320 average at the plate with seven extra-base hits and 24 RBIs. He has committed only three errors in 345 total chances this season for a .991 fielding percentage and has helped the Lions turn 32 double plays. Overall on his career, he played in 128 games at TCNJ while collecting 127 hits and 74 RBIs in 104 starts with a .302 average. He also has a .991 career fielding percentage having been charged with just seven errors in 799 total chances. He ranks among the career leaders at TCNJ having collected 24 doubles, which is 21st best in school history, while his four career triples is 10th best as well.
He boasted a 3.93 gpa as a business major at the College and had the second highest gpa of TCNJ’s senior male student-athletes this year. He is a Dean\’s List student as well as a four-time TCNJ Scholar-Athlete and a three-time NJAC Scholar-Athlete honoree. He missed five games in mid-March with a hamstring injury and returned to help the Lions make a run for the 2008 NJAC championship and post-season acclaim.
TCNJ went 30-12 on the season, while earning the No. 3 seed in both the 2008 NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional and NJAC tournaments. TCNJ, which captured three NJAC Championship titles from 2005-2007, earned one of the 14 at-large bids to the 2008 NCAA Division III Tournament and went 2-2 to advance to the final day of the 2008 NCAA Regionals, only to fall to Kean University in their bid to earn a trip to the 2008 College World Series.
To be nominated for CoSIDA’s ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America program, the student-athlete must be a starter or important reserve with at least a 3.20 cumulative grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) for his/her career. No athlete is eligible until he/she has reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at his/her current institution (thus, true freshmen, red-shirt freshmen and ineligible transfers are not eligible). In the cases of transfers, graduate students and junior college graduates, the athlete must have completed one full academic year at the nominating institution to be eligible
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