Runyon Named Third Team CoSIDA Academic All-American
CoSIDA Release
GREENWOOD, Ind. – The College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) released its Men's and Women's At-Large Academic All-Americans for NCAA Division III on Tuesday afternoon. The Bombers placed one member among the list of honorees, as fifth-year senior women's lacrosse player
Ally Runyon was named a Third Team selection.
Runyon is the first Ithaca athlete to be named an Academic All-American by the organization during the 2016-17 academic year. She is the 85th all-time honoree Ithaca College has placed on the list, while she is the first student-athlete to secure CoSIDA All-America recognition in the women's at-large category since IC gymnast Frances Ente '09 was named a Second Team selection in 2009.
Runyon put a storybook ending on her exceptional collegiate career on South Hill. Returning from an ACL injury that cost the senior attacker her entire 2016 season, Runyon reached new career heights in her final season of eligibility, in the process leading the Bombers' women's lacrosse team to uncharted territory in the longest NCAA Tournament run in program history.
Runyon was a picture of consistency in the attacking zone, tallying multi-goal efforts in 17 of her 19 appearances on the year. Among her prodigious scoring outputs were 16 hat-tricks, 12 games with four-plus goals, and seven games with five-plus scoring tallies. She became the first player in program history to eclipse the 70-goal mark in a season, obliterating the previous single-season program record by 12 goals in finishing the year with 73 scores. Her 84 points equaled the program record, which was originally set by Julia Stone in 1993. She had eight game-winning goals, none more memorable than her coast-to-coast sprint-and-score with two seconds remaining in overtime, which pushed Ithaca past nationally-ranked Wesleyan University and into the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time ever.
Runyon leaves Ithaca with her name atop several other career lists. Her four-goal effort against nationally-ranked Salisbury in the NCAA Tournament helped her surpass Tracy Rivas '14 for first on the program's all-time list with 252 career points. She is one of three Ithaca women's players to surpass the 200-point milestone for a career. Her 215 career goals bested Rivas' previous program-best mark (184) by an astounding 31 scores. Runyon is the first IC women's player to ever eclipse 200-career goals. Runyon scored her record-setting tally in a dominant win over Hartwick earlier in the season.
The Fairport, N.Y., native was the first Ithaca player since Rivas in 2013 to be named Empire 8 Player of the Year. She was also the first player in over a decade and just the second ever to be named both Empire 8 Rookie of the Year (2013) and Empire 8 Player of the Year (2017), joining Michelle Schlegel '04 (2001, 2004). Runyon finishes her career with three consecutive Empire 8 All-Conference First Team selections (2014, 2015, 2017), three IWLCA First Team All-Empire Region selections (2014, 2015, 2017) and two consecutive IWLCA All-America honors (2015, 2017). She became Ithaca's first-ever IWLCA First Team All-American in 2017, while she was a Third-Team selection in 2015.
Tuesday's honor from CoSIDA is the first Academic All-America honor of her career. Runyon graduated this spring with a 3.94 grade-point average (GPA) in physical therapy. She has been an Empire 8 President's List and Ithaca Dean's List honoree throughout her career, in addition to being a CoSIDA Academic All-District III selection earlier this spring.