Leah Raffety now has an off-the-field honor to add to her short NIU career.

Last week, redshirt freshman Raffety was named to the Cross Country Academic All-MAC Team. In order to qualify for the conference award, a student-athlete must have obtained at least a 3.2 cumulative GPA and must have participated in at least 50 percent of the races during the season. Freshmen and first-year transfer students are not eligible to receive the award.

Raffety, a pre-physical therapy major, joined fellow Academic All-MAC team members Paige Foster from Kent State and Ohio’s Maureen Dean as the only men or women honored who had a 4.0.

“It is really awesome,” Raffety said. “I didn’t think I was going to have a 4.0 because it was a really tough semester, but it was great being recognized for it. It was really nice.”

Greg Hipp, cross country head coach, who just finished his third season with the program, has made academics a priority for his student-athletes.

“We put an emphasis on grades each year, and I feel like as a college coach or any coach, the academic side is a part of your job,” Hipp said. “If they don’t do well academically with us they cannot get the careers that they want and then they can’t live the lives that they want. ”

Raffety was joined by three teammates who made the Academic Honorable mention team: sophomore distance runner Hannah Savage, team captain Jamie Burr and sophomore distance runner Ali Olson.

As a team, NIU had a 3.6 GPA, with five athletes having a perfect 4.0. Including this season, the Huskies have had at least one athlete be named Academic All-Mac for four straight seasons.

“We pride ourselves on trying to have a balanced approach on our priorities,” Hipp said. “We try and be successful both academically and athletically. Certainly, I think that is something that all programs have as their goals, but I think we have proven that it is truly a priority for us to do well academically as well as what we are trying to do athletically.”

Raffety raced in six meets in 2013. She ran a season-best 5K time of 18:39.72 at the Illinois State Invitational and placed 45th at the MAC Championships with a time of 23:02.42.

When it came to the 6K course, she posted a season-low time of 22:20.00 at the Bradley Classic. And in the last meet of the season, the NCAA Midwest Regional, Raffety finished with the third-best time on the team with a 22:27.60 to place 121 of 212.

“You can consider that regionals was a better race for me,” Raffety said. “Due to the fact that it was a higher pressure situation to perform well, and as a team we all did a lot better, so I guess in that sense I would say that regionals was the best performance I had during cross country.”