Two Ravens Earn ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District Honors

Leedham

Gaudet

Leedham earns first team honors for second-straight year
Gaudet collects first honor with third team selection 

RINDGE, N.H. (February 6, 2009) - Two members of the Franklin Pierce University women's basketball team have earned ESPN The Magazine District I Academic All-America honors for women's basketball, as selected by College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) members in New England and New York.

Junior All-American and Great Britain international Johannah Leedham (Ellesmere Port, England/Cheshire Academy (Conn.)) was voted to the first team for the second-straight year and is again eligible for Academic All-America selection. Sophomore guard Cynthia Gaudet (Coventry, R.I./LaSalle Academy) earned Academic All-District honors for the first time with her selection to the third team. They are the fifth and sixth Academic All-District selections in program history and are the lone Northeast-10 Conference student-athletes represented on the three teams.

Leedham, who joins Franklin Pierce Hall of Famer Kari Hunt ('99) as the only two-time Academic All-District selections in program history, has earned a 3.33 cumulative grade point average at the University. Also an NE-10 All-Academic first team honoree, she again ranks among Conference leaders in most categories. She has started all 19 games she has played this season and is averaging a Conference-best 24 points (5^th nationally) and 3.4 steals (23^rd) to go along with 6.3 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.6 blocked shots (4^th NE-10) per game. Leedham ranks 13^th in the NE-10 in field goal percentage (.489), fourth in three-point field goal percentage (.397), seventh in free-throw percentage (.857) and first with 2.6 three-point field goals per game.

Leedham owns no less than 25 program records for Franklin Pierce. She has reached double-figures in scoring in 76 of the 77 games she has played over her career so far. Of those 76 games, she has scored 20-plus points 55 times and netted 30-plus on 21 occasions. Leedham holds every steal record at the University, having set the career mark (276) earlier this season, and has moved into second place on the program's career scoring list with 1,792 points.

Leedham, the first Northeast-10 women's basketball player ever named State Farm/WBCA Division II Player of the Year when she earned the honors last season, also earned State Farm/WBCA All-America and Daktronics All-America honors last winter, while also collecting All- Region, NE-10 and ECAC Player of the Year and All-NE-10 first team. 

Gaudet, who joins Leedham as the only two sophomores in program history to earn Academic All-District honors, is the lone second-year student-athlete selected to the three teams this season. She currently owns the highest cumulative grade point average of any student-athlete at

Franklin Pierce at 3.959, while majoring in biology. Gaudet was an NE-10 Commissioner's Honor Roll Gold Scholar as a freshman and has earned Athletic Department Honor Roll status all three semesters.

Gaudet has played in all 20 games this season, starting seven, and is averaging 5.1 points, 1.8 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 21.1 minutes per game. She netted a career-best 13 points in Franklin Pierce's 76-44 win over Merrimack College on December 22 and dished a career-high seven assists in the Ravens 89-60 triumph against Wilmington University on January 4.

The pair heads a Franklin Pierce team which was ranked No. 22 in the WBCA Division II Academic Top 25, having earned a 3.399 team grade point average for the 2007-08 academic year.          

Franklin Pierce (16-4, 13-3 NE-10), ranked 24^th in this week's USA Today/ESPN/WBCA Division II poll and second in this week's NCAA Division II East Regional rankings, is back in action tomorrow when it battles Bentley University, ranked sixth in the region, at 1:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast live on WEEI 93.5 FM Keene.