HOWEY-IN-THE-HILLS, Fla. – After leading the Manhattanville golf team on the course all season long, senior Mike Cresci and graduate student George Tischler were also honored for their work in the classroom as well by the Golf Coaches Association of America on Tuesday night, as the two Valiants were named Cleveland Golf/Srixon All-America Scholars at the Division III Awards Banquet following day one of the NCAA Championships.
Tischler also received some individual honors for his superb play on the course as well, as he was named to the Division III PING All-Mid-Atlantic Region team. Tischler is one of just 12 players in the region and 72 players across the country to earn the honor, the eighth in program history, while also extending Manhattanville’s streak of All-Region recipients to three years in a row.
Cresci becomes the second player in program history to earn the maximum two All-America Scholar honors, joining Jason Zubatkin ’08 (2007-08), while Tischler earns All-America Scholar status for the first time. The two honorees increase the total number of Valiants to receive the award to six over the last six years, and also make Manhattanville one of just seven schools in Division III to have more than one honoree named to the exclusive 23-golfer list.
To be eligible for All-America Scholar honors, an individual must be a junior or senior academically and compete in at least two full years at the collegiate level, participate in 70 percent of his team’s competitive rounds or compete in the NCAA Championships, have a stroke average under 79.0, and maintain a minimum cumulative grade-point average of 3.20.
After three years away from the team, Tischler has been the team’s scoring leader all season long in 2011-12, and enters day two of the NCAA Championships with a team-leading and career-best 76.2 scoring average that places him second on the school’s single-season list. The individual medalist at both the Hamilton Fall Invitational and the Manhattanville/NYU Fall Classic, he has recorded nine top-20s in 10 completed events so far this season and recorded three of the four lowest rounds in program history, including a record 69 at Hamilton on October 8. He was named to the All-Freedom Conference second team with a sixth-place finish at the conference championships in April.
In two seasons with Manhattanville, Tischler enters Wednesday second in school history with a scoring average of 76.28 strokes per round in 32 career rounds played.
Cresci has been one of the steadiest players in program history in his four years with the program, and earns his second straight All-America Scholar honor thanks to his career-best 77.95 stroke average so far this year. The only Valiant to play in every round this season, he has posted a team-leading 10 top-20 finishes and six top-10s in 11 completed events so far this year. He earned All-Conference first-team honors for the third time with a fourth-place result at the Freedom Conference Championships last month.
Only the second player in program history to be named All-Conference four times (joining current head coach Nikhil Kumar ’05), Cresci enters Wednesday with the fifth lowest scoring average in program history at 78.76 strokes per round, and has done so in 79 rounds – a total that is 15 more than any other player ever at the school. The senior also possesses three of the top-nine single-season scoring averages at Manhattanville.
Tischler, Cresci and the rest of the Valiant men’s golf team will get back on the course for day two of the NCAA Div. III Championships today, as the squad looks to make a leap up the leaderboard into the top 15 and make the cut. The first Manhattanville group tees off at noon, with live scoring available all day long on NCAA.com.