Kester Named Student-Athlete of Year

Photo by DSPics.com

ALBANY, N.Y. - Kirsten Kester, a senior forward at Harvard University, has been named the 2008-09 ECAC Women's Hockey Student-Athlete of the Year, it was announced today by the League office.  The third recipient of the award, which recognizes academic achievement of ECAC Hockey student-athletes, Kester was one of three finalists for this year's honor.  Yale's Danielle Kozlowski and Darmouth's Sarah Parsons also were finalists.  Other nominees for consideration included Clarkson's Kim McKenney and Colgate's Laura Jensen.

Kester is a co-captain and two-time National Scholar Athlete and ECAC Hockey All-Academic Team selection.  Playing in 130 career games, she has helped the Crimson to the NCAA tournament three times, including a 2008 Frozen Four appearance.  The Crimson also captured two ECAC Hockey titles and two regular season crowns during Kester's tenure in Cambridge.  Off the ice she is a model student-athlete.  Majoring in Biology with a secondary concentration in English, Kester was nearly perfect in the classroom.  She has participated in various laboratory research and received a series of grants and awards including Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology Grant-in-Aid of Undergraduate Research, the Harvard Research Program Grant and Harvard's Microbial Sciences Initiative Fellowship.  Kester was also a part of Harvard's 2+2 program, a competitive program for rising college seniors.  She has been involved in many community projects including the National Symposium for the Advancement of Women in Science, serving on Big/Little Sisters Committees and coaching with some of her teammates in the Chowder Cup, raising money for breast cancer awareness.

Each school was asked to nominate a top scholar athlete who met the following requirements: a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.50 on a 4.00 scale through the fall term; participation in a minimum of 50 percent of the team's contests (33 percent of team's minutes for goaltenders); demonstrated leadership on and off the ice (e.g., character, contributions to the community, participation/involvement in institutional groups/committees, etc.).

The finalists were selected by a committee made up of athletic department and university administrators.

About ECAC Hockey
ECAC Hockey boasts elite student-athletes and teams from 12 of the nation's most prestigious institutions - Brown University, Clarkson University, Colgate University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, Quinnipiac University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, St. Lawrence University, Union College, and Yale University.

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