By: COURTESY OF LESLEY UNIVERSITY SPORTS INFORMATION
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Lesley University women's basketball guard Leila Chisholm and forward Alawnah Dunda were named to the College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-District® Team as announced by the organization.
To be eligible to earn CSC Academic All-District recognition, a student-athlete must own a cumulative GPA above 3.50 and have significant athletic credentials. Additionally, student-athletes must have competed in 90 percent of their institution's games or have started in at least 66 percent of its contests.
This is Chisholm's second CSC Academic All-District Honor, as the senior guard earned a 3.72 GPA while working on her degree in History.
On the court, Chisholm started in all 25 for the Lynx. She averaged the third-most minutes per game of anyone in the NAC and 37th in the country. She finished the season with 269 points, 111 rebounds, 61 assists, 68 steals, and 7 blocks. She led the team in field goals, three-pointers, and free-throw percentage.
She ranked in the top 100 in the country for both steals (84th) and steals per game (76th) and finished 3rd in the NAC with 58 steals. She was also Lesley's representative on the NAC Sportsmanship team.
Dunda received CSC Academic All-District Honors this fall as part of the volleyball team but this is her first for basketball. The dual sport Sophomore is getting her degree in Interactive Design and received a 3.78 GPA this semester.
Dunda started in all 23 games she appeared in. She finished the season with 233 points, 210 rebounds, 12 assists, 25 steals, and 4 blocks. She led the Lynx in rebounds, averaging 9.1 rebounds per game and 8.4 in NAC matchups, placing her 5th in the conference. She grabbed 18 rebounds on Jan. 11 vs SUNY Delhi, the third most in a NAC game this season.
About College Sports Communicators
College Sports Communicators (CSC) was founded in 1957 and is a 4,400+ member national association for strategic, creative and digital communicators across intercollegiate athletics in the United States and Canada. The current name of the organization was adopted following a membership-wide vote on August 31, 2022.
From its found in 1957 until the 2022 name change, the organization was known as College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
The name change signaled a major step in a larger strategic plan to highlight the association's evolution and expansion. The move better aligns with the association's membership makeup and further positions the organization to support and advocate for its members who serve in the communications, digital and creative college sports industry, regardless of position or title.
The organization, which celebrated its 65th year during the 2021-22 academic year, is the second oldest management association in all of intercollegiate athletics. College Sports Communicators became an affiliated partner with NACDA (National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics) in December of 2008.
CSC's membership first reached the 3,000 mark during the 2013-14 school year and has topped that threshold each year since with the exception of the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic year. The membership base reached 4,000 for the first time in 2022-23.
Prior to the formation of the organization as CoSIDA in the mid-1950s, sports information directors as a group were a part of the American College Public Relations Association. Most SIDs at those ACPRA meetings eventually felt that a separate organization was needed and that led to CoSIDA's formation. There were 102 members at the original meeting/convention in 1957.