Men's and Women's teams, three individuals earn academic awards.

May 26, 1999

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - As has become the norm in recent years, the North Carolina men's and women's swimming teams earned Team Academic All-American honors from the College Swimming Coaches Association of America for the spring semester of 1999.

In addition, three members of the UNC swimming teams, senior Ted Brisson, junior Jennifer Strasburger and sophomore Ethan Hall, were all named winners of the CSCAA's individual Academic All-American awards for the 1998-99 school year.

To qualify for the All-Academic Team Honors from the CSCAA, a team is required to maintain a grade point average of at least 2.750. The Tar Heel women had a team GPA of 2.9 for the spring semester and have now made All-Academic for 18 successive semesters, each semester in the past nine school years. The Tar Heel men's team had a spring semester GPA of 2.8 and has now been named All-Academic seven of the last nine years (14 semesters in all), including each of the past 10 semesters (five successive school years).

Individually, Brisson, Strasburger and Hall all won CSCAA awards by having a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher and qualifying for the 1999 NCAA Men's or Women's Championship meet. "In my opinion the CSCAA individual team is the hardest of all the various Academic All-American Teams to make," says UNC head swimming coach Frank Comfort. "The standards for making the team are so high that it is a credit to anyone who meets the criteria."

Brisson, a senior from Goldsboro, N.C., was named to the CSCAA individual Academic All-American Team for the third successive year, a remarkable accomplishment. Strasburger, a junior from Mercer Island, Wash., and Hall, a sophomore from Pleasant Hill, Calif., were both named for the first time in their careers.