BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A total of five Valdosta State student-athletes were honored Tuesday as Gulf South Conference Spring All-Academic selection and 51 Blazers were named to the GSC Spring Academic Honor Roll, announced by the league office.  
 
For the year 2021-22 academic year, VSU had eight student-athletes earn Academic All-GSC, while 133 student-athletes earned GSC Academic Honor Roll.  
 
Click here for the GSC Spring All-Academic Teams and for the GSC Spring Academic Honor Roll.
 
Earning GSC All-Academic honors this spring were softball sophomore Morgan Hill and senior Nikki Pennington, while men's tennis sophomore Luca Mack, along with men's golf graduate student Wesley Hanson and junior Chase Weathers.  In the fall, football graduate student Brian Saunds, along with football junior John Miller earned all-academic honors, while women's basketball graduate student Kwajelin Farrar earned all-academic honors during the winter season.
 
Hill, earns all-academic honors for the second-straight season.  She hit .258 for the season in 49 games with 48 starts.  She recorded 39 hits with 46 runs scored, seven doubles, one triple, eight home runs and 35 RBI.  Hill slugged .477 and reached base at a .396 clip.  She went a team-best 20 of 22 in stolen bases.  She also saw action in the circle in 12 games with seven starts for 23.1 innings.  She has 20 strikeouts for the season and went 2-1 with one complete game, one shutout and one combined shutout.
 
Pennington earned D2 Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) First Team All-Region honors and GSC all-first team honors this season helping lead the Blazers to the NCAA South Super Regionals.  She finished third on the team with a .310 batting average and tallied 48 hits, 38 runs scored, eight doubles, 14 home runs and drove in 43.  Pennington slugged a team-best .632 for the season with 23 walks and an on-base average of .388.  She played and started 49 games and finished her career fourth all-time in school history in career home runs with 44. 
 
Mack finished seventh nationally in singles for the Blazer men's tennis team helping lead the team to the NCAA postseason and the team finished 12^th nationally.  Mack earned ITA All-America honors in both singles and doubles this season as he, along with sophomore teammate Rodrigo Carvalho were the top-ranked doubles tandem nationally. The duo went 16-8 this year and 10-8 in the spring, while going 5-2 in GSC play.  Mack went 20-5 for the year in singles and 15-5 in the spring as he was 7-2 in league play.  He earned GSC Player of the Week five times and was named First Team All-GSC.  
 
Hanson earned a berth in the NCAA South/Southeast Super Regional as an individual this season, finishing tied for 48^th.  He is a two-time GSC Men's Golf Champion Scholar-Athlete (2020 & 2021), while earning GSC All-Academic honors multiple times.  In 2019-20, he earned Third Team Academic All-America honors as selected by CoSIDA, marking the first Blazer men's golfer to earn this prestigious honor in program history.  Hanson finished his career playing in 37 tournaments for 107 rounds and a 75.15 stroke average.  
 
Weathers earns his second All-Academic GSC honors for his career in 2022.  He finished this season playing in ten tournaments for 30 rounds with 28 rounds in the 70s and a low-round of 69.  He finished a season-best tenth at the Saint Leo Invitational (69,73,70) this year and a 74.7 stroke average for the season.