All-American Honors: Ferris State University sopho­more guard Sarah DeShone has earned the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Division II Honorable Mention All-American hon­ors. Torch File Photo

Not even the hockey team’s NCAA Frozen Four berth could over­shadow sopho­more guard Sarah DeShone’s accomplishments.

The guard has earned All-American hon­ors for Division II women’s bas­ket­ball on top of the his­toric sea­son for the Lady Bulldogs.

“Well, it feels great to be awarded, but a lot of it is because of my team­mates and with­out them all of my hard work wouldn’t be as reward­ing,” hon­oree DeShone said.

DeShone led the Bulldogs in scor­ing in the 2011-12 cam­paign by aver­ag­ing 14.6 points per game and almost five assists to add to her sta­tis­tics as well.

DeShone was a big part in the Bulldogs huge suc­cess this sea­son, as FSU won the GLIAC North Division for only the sec­ond time in school his­tory and by earn­ing a num­ber two seed in the NCAA Division II tournament.

The All-American com­mit­tee is com­posed of eight rep­re­sen­ta­tives from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try with one chair­man over­look­ing all of the dis­cus­sion and voting.

DeShone’s acco­lades for this past sea­son are remark­able; not only was she an All-American hon­or­able men­tion, but also an All-GLIAC first team selec­tion, All-GLIAC tour­na­ment team and an All-Midwest Region sec­ond team selec­tion. As only a sopho­more, the future looks even brighter for the Bulldog star.

When asked what she improved on most from the pre­vi­ous sea­son, the hum­bled star said, “My lead­er­ship abil­i­ties have improved. I feel like with­out my team­mates I couldn’t have achieved this.”

Since 1981, the start of the All-American com­mit­tee, there have been only four other Bulldogs to receive any type of men­tion from the panel, the last was Rachel Folcik in the 2006-07 cam­paign as she earned hon­or­able men­tion hon­ors as well.

Even though the Bulldogs are hav­ing suc­cess in many sports, this achieve­ment is one to be proud of as a pro­gram and as a step­ping stone for the women’s bas­ket­ball team as they look to take another step next year.

“It starts this Monday. In the post-season we need to work on putting up a lot of shots in an open gym, and play­ing with each other so we can get that chem­istry back that we had all of this sea­son,” stated an eager DeShone.

The Bulldogs now hit the sum­mer work­ing on get­ting where they were this past sea­son, and even though key play­ers Tricia Principe, Lindsey Pettit and Kelsey DeNoyelles will be grad­u­at­ing in the spring, DeShone along with the rest of the Bulldogs have the abil­ity to main­tain that high
level of suc­cess. n

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