CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Baldwin Wallace University baseball senior All-American infielder Luke Vonderhaar (New Bremen) has been awarded the NCAA Elite 90 Award for the second consecutive season.
The NCAA Elite 90 Award is given out each NCAA National Championship and goes to the student-athlete who has their highest cumulative GPA amongst all the competing teams. Across all three divisions of NCAA competition, 90 student-athletes receive this award each year. This award is the NCAA's top award recognizing academic and athletic achievement.
Vonderhaar was named BW's male Clyde Lamb Award winner for the 2022-23 season. The Clyde Lamb Award is given out to one male and one female senior student athlete at each Ohio Athletic Conference institution. The award goes to a senior student-athlete who has participated in an OAC sport for at least two seasons, has above a 3.00 GPA and a sportsmanlike conduct in a manner that has brought credit to the student-athlete and his or her institution. Additionally, Vonderhaar is a Dean's List student, a Jacket Scholar, and a member of the Dayton C. Miller and Chi Alpha Sigma honoraries.
Vonderhaar was the first Yellow Jackets student-athlete to win the award when he won it last season. He now is a repeat winner with a 3.986 GPA throughout his undergraduate courses taken at BW. Vonderhaarwas named College Sports Information Directors of American (CoSIDA) Academic All-American, a CoSIDA Academic All-District 7 selection and an Academic All-Ohio Athletic Conference performer last season. This season, Vonderhaar has been named a College Sports Communicators Academic All-District selection and earned his third Academic All-OAC honor.
On the field, Vonderhaar has a .339 batting average with a .433 on-base percentage and a .552 slugging percentage. He collected 65 hits, 20 doubles, seven home runs, he has a5 runs scored and 47 RBIs. He also swiped seven stolen bases this season.
In his career, Vonderhaar is hitting .335 with a .421 on-base percentage and a .593 slugging percentage. He has 181 hits, 43 doubles, 2 triples, 31 home runs, 144 runs scored and 151 RBIs. He was named an American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings All-America third team recipient, a D3baseball.com All-American fourth team honoree, an American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings All-Region first team selection, a D3baseball.com All-Region first team selection, the Brockport (N.Y.) NCAA All-Regional Tournament MVP and he was named to the 2022 OAC All-Tournament team.
BW returns to the diamond on Friday, June 2nd to take on Endicott (Mass.) College in the first round of the NCAA Division III College World Series on the Perfect Game Field at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at 2:15 p.m.