Webber's Salla Rautiainen named CoSIDA First-Team Academic All-American

by Richard Baptist

Babson Park, Fla. (06/17/2020) — Salla Rautiainen of the Webber International University women's beach volleyball team was honored as a part of the 2019-20 Academic All-America NAIA Women's At-Large First-Team as voted by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Rautiainen was the only beach volleyball player to be named either a first-team or second-team CoSIDA Academic All-American, and becomes the first CoSIDA Academic All-American in program history for Webber.

Rautiainen lands among 11 student-athletes on the CoSIDA Academic All-America First-Team. Overall, only 21 players in the NAIA make up the CoSIDA Academic All-America NAIA Women's At-Large first and second teams. To be eligible, a player must have one complete season at their institution with a minimum career GPA of 3.3 and be a starter or key reserve. Despite the cancellation of spring competition during COVID-19, CoSIDA continued its sponsorship of the Academic All-America awards program. Student-athletes were selected based on career statistics.

Rautiainen is a native of Espoo, Finland, who boasts a 3.97 grade point average in the computer information systems program as a senior.

She was a member of Webber's American Volleyball Coaches' Association (AVCA) Small College Beach Volleyball National Championship team in 2018, and she played a key role in Webber's 2019 Sun Conference Regular-Season and Conference Invitational championships as the Warriors also went on to make their third straight Small College Beach Volleyball Final Four appearance that season as well.

Rautiainen was 3-3 in the No. 2 position and 2-0 in TSC matches in 2020 before the season was cut short.

On Wednesday, March 11, of this season, Rautiainen and her partner Mekenzie Breuklander were named The Sun Conference's Beach Volleyball Pair of the Week after going 2-0 at the Webber Quadrangular to help their teams start 2-0 in Sun Conference play with a pair of 5-0 seeps over both St. Thomas University and Florida Memorial University. The combination of Breuklander and Rautiainen only gave up a combined total of 49 points between both matches on the day.

Other academic awards for Rautiainen from her time at Webbe so far include: 2019-20 Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete, making the Dean's List ever semester she has been at Webber, being a member of the Honor's Program since the spring of 2019, and earning Academic All-Sun Conference honors in indoor volleyball in 2018 and 2019 and in beach volleyball in 2020.

Rautiainen is a peer tutor at Webber helping other students succeed in their academics and is also a member of PBL where they have hosted numerous events (Halloween, Christmas, Easter) to bring the community together with Webber. She is also a founder of Webber's new "The Warrior" newsletter as the head of design. Salla is very proud of the fact that she and her peers first began creating the newsletter from scratch in the fall of 2019 and now have almost 500 followers on Instagram. Salla is also the only current Finnish beach volleyball player playing at the collegiate level in the United States.

The 2019-20 Academic All-America program, selected by CoSIDA, recognizes the nation's top student-athletes for their combined performances on the field and in the classroom. The CoSIDA Academic All-America program separately recognizes soccer honorees in four divisions - NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III and NAIA.

The at-large program for the Academic All-America program includes the sports of fencing, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming and diving, tennis, water polo for both men and women; bowling, crew and field hockey for women; and volleyball and wrestling for men.

The NAIA Academic All-America program is financially supported by the NAIA national governance structure to assist CoSIDA with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2019-20 NAIA Academic All-America teams.

For more information on the CoSIDA Academic All-America program, go to https://academicallamerica.com/.

Congrats again to Salla Rautiainen on her terrific CoSIDA Academic All-America First-Team recognition.

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