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Six Gauchos Get All-American Honors, Moran is Named WDIA Player of the Year

May. 7, 2009

Scottsdale, AZ - US Lacrosse gets right to it when it comes to announcing individual post-season honors, holding the WDIA All-American awards ceremony the first night of the four day National Championship Tournament. As soon as the indvidual awards part of the event started UCSB players heard their teammates names called early and often for requests to come to the stage to receive All-American certficates.

Senior midfielder Katie Moran (San Rafael, CA) received the coveted WDIA Player of the Year in the last award given at the end of the night. Moran was the Pre-Season WDIA Player of the Year by vote of Lacrosse Magazine writers but the WDIA Recognition Committee made it real by selecting her as the post-season WDIA Player of the Year. Moran, who was also WWLL Player of the Year, was named to the WDIA All-American First Team as a midfielder for the second consecutive season. Junior Maggie Aker (Oakland, CA) moved up from her 2008 Second Team spot to join Moran on the First Team this year. First-time selections for the WDIA All-American teams were junior Monora Seth (San Diego, CA) on defense and sophomore Ashley Antoon-Algieri (San Ramon, CA) on attack giving UCSB four First Team All-Americans. Senior defender Selina Eadie (Davis, CA) and junior attacker Samantha Lutz (San Diego, CA) were named Second Team All-Americans at the start of the call to Gauchos to step up on stage at the beginning of the All-American procession. Both Eadie and Lutz received All-American honors for the first time and it followed up All-League honors earned by both players at the WWLL All-League ceremony on April 18th.

The Gauchos had more players named All-American than they did All-League with these six getting named All-American and five of them getting All-League. Seth being left off both the 1st and 2nd WWLL post-season honor teams seemed to be an injustice at the time that group was named since many consider her UCSB's best defender and she was a 2nd Team All-League pick as a sophomore. Seth getting All-American washes away the oversight and the national endorsement of her abilities is a nice 'feather in the cap' of her career so far for her and the Gauchos.

The six players named to the two teams eclipsed the five players named All-American from the 2008 UCSB team, which had been an all-time high for number of players chosen. The five players selected in 2008 eclipsed the two players selected in each of 2007 and 2006.

"This is fantastic for so many of our players to be recognized for their ability and effort," commented UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey after the awards ceremony. "It is also a testament to our broad based philosophy of involving everyone in what we're doing, whatever that might be, offense or defense."

Indeed.  It would be hard for an individual focused offense to get so may players involved to the point that two attackers and two midfielders make All-American teams. Without great team defense only one defender might stand out instead of two defenders and the same two midfielders who get noticed at both the offensive and defensive ends of the field.

2009 UCSB U.S. Lacrosse WDIA All-Americans

WDIA Player of the Year
Katie Moran