AMHERST, N.Y. – Freshman
Katlyn Newberry (Rochester, N.Y.) of the women's bowling team and junior
Ricardo Ruiz Martinez (Valencia, Spain) of the men's tennis team have been named the Daemen College Student-Athletes of the Month—presented by Western New York Knee and Orthopedic Surgery PC—for March 2018.
Newberry earns the honor for the second time this year. This past November she became the first-ever women's bowling student-athlete to earn the award since the program's inception three years ago.
Newberry led the Wildcats to their best-ever finish at the East Coast Conference Championship tournament held March 23-25 in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y. The fifth-seeded Wildcats opened double-elimination round action with wins over 12th-seeded St. Thomas Aquinas College (4-1) and fourth-seeded Felician College (4-3), before suffering a 4-0 loss to top-seeded Lincoln Memorial University. Down 3-0 to seventh-seeded Chestnut Hill College, Daemen rallied for a 4-3 victory to earn spot in the tournament's final four. Daemen's quest for a conference title came to an end against third-seeded Adelphi University, as the nationally-ranked Panthers rallied from a 3-1 deficit to post a 4-3 victory over the Wildcats.
Newberry bowled 109 total frames during the tournament and posted a team-high 18.22 pins per frame average and a team-high 39 strikes. Her 51 spares ranked second to sophomore
Rachel Steele's 55.
For the season, Newberry bowled in a team-high 491 frames and posted a 17.79 pins-per-frame scoring average with 188 strikes and 191 spares. Daemen closed out the year with a 35-17 overall record, the best record in the team's brief three-year history and more than double their win total from all of last season (16-25). All 10 players on the roster are set to return next season.
Ruiz Martinez went 6-3 during singles play during the month of March and in the process established a new program record for most singles wins in a season.
After losing his first two singles matches of the month, he ran off five straight wins—marking the second time this season he has posted a winning streak of that quantity. Highlights of the five-match winning streak included East Coast Conference wins over Hugo Evangelista de Andrade of Queens College and Jakob Ljungberg of St. Thomas Aquinas College. His personal winning streak came to an end during the match at Franklin Pierce University last Friday, but he rebounded with a win over Ricardo Marreiros during a loss to regional power Southern New Hampshire University the following day.
The win over Marreiros—a first-team All-Northeast-10 Conference selection last year—earned Ruiz Martinez his 14th singles win of the year, which broke the program record of 13 set by teammate
Mark Veitengruber(Rockford, Mich.) during the 2015-16 season.
A second-team All-ECC selection as a sophomore, Ruiz Martinez owns a 14-7 record in singles play this year and has also posted a 10-12 mark in doubles action. He ranks fourth in team history with 24 singles wins and is just the sixth player in team history with at least 40 combined singles/doubles wins for a career.
Daemen (5-14, 0-2 ECC) returns to action Tuesday (April 3) when it hosts rival Roberts Wesleyan College in a league match.
