Poveda & Siaba Finalists for NE10 Woman/Man of the Year Awards – Stonehill College Athletics

Stonehill is lone institution with finalists for both honors, set to be announced on Monday

Finalists Named for NE10 Woman & Man of the Year Awards

NE10 Woman & Man of the Year All-Time Winners

EASTON, Mass. (June 1, 2021) Stonehill College graduates Sophia Poveda and Michel-Ange Siaba have been listed among the 28 nominees for the Northeast-10 Conference Woman and Man of the Year awards, both of which are selected by the league's Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) Council.

Each nominee is a senior student-athlete that has excelled in all areas of their collegiate careers, on the field, in the classroom, and in the community. The two respective winners are set to be announced and honored as part of a virtual event streamed via NE10 NOW on Monday, June 7, at 7 p.m. The 2020-21academic year marks the ninth year in which a Man of the Year will be named, while the NE10 Woman of the Year has been awarded since 2006 and will be put forth as the Conference's official NCAA Woman of the Year nominee.

Stonehill is the lone NE10 institution with a finalist for both the Women and Man of the Year awards. Poveda is the College's first finalist since former field hockey All-American Devin Ingersoll, '14 following the 2013-14 academic year, while Siaba is the third Man of the Year finalist, joining eventual winners Alexander Demeule, '19, from the cross country and track & field programs, and Dana Borges, '13, the inaugural award recipient from the ice hockey program.

Poveda, who received Stonehill's Edward E. Martin Female Senior Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, recently graduated with a 3.71 cumulative grade point average in the Moreau Honors Program with a Bachelor's Degree as a double-major in political science and international studies. She is a four-year letterwinner and two-year captain of the volleyball program who earned All-NE10 first team honors as a junior in 2019. She is a three-time Arthur Ashe, Jr., Sports Scholar, and two-time Division II Athletic Director's Association (ADA) Academic Achievement Award recipient, while receiving the St. Thomas Aquinas, Patron Saint of Students, Medal for having the highest cumulative grade point average on the volleyball team.

Poveda, who delivered the student address at Stonehill's Class of 2021 Commencement, has been named to the NE10 Academic Honor Roll all seven semesters to date, with Academic Distinction status for having a GPA between 3.50 and 3.99 the last five semesters. She received the Presidential Scholarship all four years, has been named to the Athletic Director's Honor Roll and Dean's List all seven semesters to date, while being inducted to Lambda Epsilon Sigma and Omicron Delta Epsilon honor societies. Poveda has is a Footlocker Scholar-Athlete Scholarship recipient and was honored as a U.S. Army/Pro Football Hall of Fame Award for Excellence National Finalist.

Poveda participated in the Goldman Sachs Undergraduate Camp in Dallas, Texas, in February 2019, from which she was selected for the company's Virtual Series Insight Scholar, and completed an internship with the United States Embassy, in Buenos Aires, Argentina the summer of 2019. She was a peer mentor at Stonehill with the Moreau Honors Program meeting and communicating with assigned incoming freshmen to assist with the college transition and a subject tutor with Stonehill's Center for Writing and Academic Achievement in Spanish, economics, political science, and business courses.

Poveda has volunteered her time as a counselor with the Ace's Girls Program, which is a female empowerment program for local youth and has helped the team with Team IMPACT, coordinating the team's involvement with the organization prior to signing their new teammate in February 2020. She coached for the Mass Premier Volleyball Club's U-14 team during her time at Stonehill, and for two years helped host a talent show and decorate the Heights Crossing Rehabilitation Center for the holidays. She helped with the reading program and assisted with homework at Trinity Catholic Academy in Brockton, Massachusetts. She volunteered at Carlton M. Viveiros Elementary school in Rhode Island and volunteered during the holiday seasons at My Brother's Keeper in Easton, Massachusetts. In 2019, Poveda volunteered at the Hogar Santa Ana in Buenos Aires, where she played games and led arts and crafts with children from abusive families.

During her sophomore year, Poveda was nominated by her coach to be involved in the Stonehill Leadership Development Series for student-athletes. Poveda is a Student Spokesperson for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) where she was a speaker at FCA Night of Champions, donor events, and school chapels.

Poveda played in 68 matches (227 sets) over her four-year Stonehill career, averaging 2.49 kills, 0.35 service aces and 2.31 digs per set as an outside hitter. She finished her career with 566 kills, 79 aces, 524 digs and 53 blocks, totaling 20 double-doubles. Poveda ranked sixth in the NE10 for aces per set (0.38) in 2019, while also ranking seventh in kills per set (2.88) and points per set (3.38) after ranking third among NE10 leaders with 0.47 aces per set in 2018.

Siaba, who received Stonehill's Fr. William Gartland, CSC, Male Senior Student-Athlete Award, recently graduated with a 3.88 cumulative grade point average as a criminology major at the College. He was a 2021 Fulbright Scholarship semifinalist, Presidential Merit Scholarship recipient and has been inducted to the Edwin H. Sutherland Criminology Honor Society. Siaba has been named to the Dean's List every semester enrolled at the College and has also earned NE10 Academic Honor Roll and Athletic Director's Honor Roll status each semester since transferring to Stonehill.

Siaba, who will attend Suffolk Law School in the fall, has devoted his time to the fight for racial justice throughout the community, especially policing reform centered around his criminology major. An active member of Stonehill's Students in Action (SIA) organization on campus, he helped organize the multimedia needs for the group's campus sit-in during the fall semester. This spring, he interviewed members of the Stonehill faculty on how they engage in racial discourse in the classroom and how to improve the racial climate on campus, presenting his findings to the College's President, Fr. John Denning, CSC. He conducted a personal letter writing campaign in the wake of last summer's protests following the George Floyd murder, submitting essays to California State Representative Anna Eshoo and then-Senator Kamala Harris, receiving responses from both, encouraging them to fight to pass meaningful police reform laws.

Siaba has volunteered his time with The Humboldt Area Center for Harm and Karat School Project in Palo Alto, California, a non-profit organization that strives to provide quality education to underprivileged children while helping communities in need in the Ivory Coast, where Siaba was born. More locally, he volunteered with the Plymouth County Police Department's Drug Buy Back program. He was co-editor of Martin Institute's Prints, Stonehill's sociological, anthropological and criminological academic journal, having submitted a writing of his own in the spring 2020 issue that discusses the prison system, why it has persisted and how we can begin to move away from it.

Siaba also made an immediate impact with the track & field program at Stonehill in the brief time he was a Skyhawk after transferring from Humboldt State University prior to the 2019-20 academic year. He was named Most Outstanding Field Athlete at the 2020 Northeast-10 Indoor Track & Field Championships after picking up three All-Conference performances at the event. He earned All-NE10 second team honors for the long jump and triple jump, finishing third in both events with distances of a school-record 23-feet, 1.75-inches and 46-feet 6.75-inches, respectively. Siaba was a third team All-NE10 performer in the heptathlon, posting a school-record 4,666 points for his third-place finish for that event.

Siaba has earned four U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) All-East Region awards, adding the honor in the long jump this spring to honors for the long jump, triple jump and heptathlon during the 2019-20 indoor season. This spring, he posted season-bests of 22-feet, 9-inches in the long jump and 46-feet, 3.5-inches in the triple jump, earning All-New England honors for the first time with his eighth place finish in the long jump at the 2021 New England Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

With 23 intercollegiate sports, Stonehill boasts one of the top athletic and academic programs in the country. Stonehill has won the Northeast-10 Conference Presidents' Cup six times, all coming within the last 15 years, after receiving the Cup for the winter sports season in 2019-20 while holding an overall lead in the standings prior to the remainder of the athletic calendar being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March. Stonehill won seven NE10 Championships during the 2019-20 academic year, with six programs earning NCAA Division II Championship bids. The Skyhawks have received the NCAA Division II Presidents' Award for Academic Achievement each of the first ten years of the program's existence of honoring institutions with an Academic Success Rate (ASR) of 90-percent or better. Stonehill has earned a 92% Academic Success Ranking (ASR) by the NCAA, which considers the academic success rate of the institution based on the graduation rate of student-athletes, good for third in the NE10 and 18th among all NCAA Division II institutions, with seven Skyhawk teams receiving a perfect rating of 100%.

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Poveda & Siaba Finalists for NE10 Woman/Man of the Year Awards - Stonehill College Athletics