Finn Earns Second Consecutive CoSIDA Academic All-District Honor
5/25/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Cross Country, Women's Track & Field
May 25, 2017
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For the second season in a row, Erin Finn of the University of Michigan was voted to the Academic All-District 5 team for women's track and field/cross country, the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) announced Thursday (May 25).
With this announcement, Finn now becomes eligible for a second consecutive Capital One Academic All-America honor after earning a first-team distinction during the 2015-16 year. Each of the Academic All-District honorees are entered onto the ballot for first-, second- and third-team awards to be announced later this month.
Michigan has had an Academic All-American in track and field/cross country in six of the past seven seasons.
For all the success Finn, a recently graduated biochemistry major from West Bloomfield, Michigan, has achieved in competition this academic year as a two-time national individual runner-up and the leader of a national runner-up team, she has been just as impressive in the classroom.
In April she was bestowed the American Institute of Chemists Award for Biochemistry for her outstanding academics during her undergraduate career, which culminated later that month with her graduation. She completed her undergraduate studies with a near-perfect grade point average.
She attained this excellence in the classroom while continuing to assert herself as one of the nation's premier long-distance runners.
Finn competed for the Wolverines during both the cross country and indoor track and field seasons in 2016-17, amassing a near-peerless competitive resume that included national runner-up finishes in both sports, a Big Ten title and a regional title.
In cross country, she finished second in the country at the NCAA Championships to lead Michigan to a narrow runner-up national team finish -- tied for the best team finish in program history with the 1994 runner-up squad. Along the way, she won individual Big Ten and Great Lakes Regional titles with team trophies to match.
Indoors, she became the first woman in collegiate history to run 15:30 or faster over 5,000 meters at two consecutive NCAA Indoor Championship meets as she finished as the national runner-up at that distance. She was third at the Big Ten Indoor Championships both at 3,000 and 5,000 meters.
Though her 2017 track and field season came to a premature conclusion, Finn will return for one final year in both indoor and outdoor track in 2018 as she pursues a master's of public health degree in epidemiology.
This announcement from CoSIDA falls on the same day the Wolverines track and field team opened up the NCAA postseason at the East Preliminary Rounds. Nine women will compete in Lexington, Kentucky, at the University of Kentucky, for berths into the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on June 7-10.
Communications Contact: Kyle Terwillegar
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