A Winning Semester for Pace Athletics

The fall 2024 semester for Pace Athletics was nothing short of eventful. From individual accolades, first ever team wins, and the 2024 Pace Athletics Hall of Fame, the opening months of the school year have been filled with great success on and off respective playing fields.

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Let’s start off by looking at some of the team successes from September to November. We have first ever team victories, broken or almost broken records, major victories and more. Women’s Cross Country secured their first ever team victory in program history at the SJLI Invitational on October 19, Football captured a double-overtime victory over Saint Anselm (26–20) at Northwell Stadium, and Volleyball battled back from trailing 0–2 to win 3–2 on homecoming weekend. For the records, two teams tied a record in the first three months of the season. Field Hockey tied for most goals in a game with eight at Saint Michael’s (10/12) and Women’s Soccer broke a record for most shots in a game with 51 at the College of Staten Island (CSI) (10/30).

Individually, our student-athletes have displayed great dedication to their craft. As the Fall season concluded, we have two All-Americans (FH: Krista Dietz and Jenna McCrudden), 4 CoSIDA Academic All-District Selections (VB: Blas-Cedeno, Cosentino, Ferguson and Muhammad), and 12 Northeast-10 (NE10) All-Conference recipients. But we can’t forget our Women’s Swimming rookie, Eugenia Morossi, who has consistently led the team so far this season and is now the newest record holder of the 200-backstroke event with a fresh time of 2:01.66. She also notched a NCAA Division II National Championship “B” Qualifying Time for the event.

The Pace Athletics Hall of Fame was held on October 27 in Willcox Hall on the Pleasantville Campus. The department inducted five key individuals (Jeane Drury ‘15, Al Elliott ‘02, Casey Gelderman ‘15, Brian Pirone ‘96, and current Softball Head Coach and SWA, Claudia Stabile) who played pivotal roles in their respective Pace Athletics programs along with Joseph R. Iannello ’90 being presented with the Peter X. Finnerty Award for his outstanding leadership and service to Pace University.

As we gear up to transition into our winter sports, Men’s Basketball set a new program record for the best start to the regular season with a perfect 13–0 record while being nationally ranked #7 in all of Division II, their highest ranking in program history. On top of the team’s accomplishments, Tray Alexander was named D2 National Player of the Week (11/12) on top of being the current statistical leader with 10.8 assists per game, Jaden Kealey was named Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association (MBWA) Player of the Week (12/10), and head coach, Matt Healing, was named D2 National Head Coach of the Week by HoopDirt (12/16).

Here's to another exciting semester for Pace Athletics!