St. Louis – Drake’s Lindsay Whorton has been named Prairie Farms MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year and headlines a group of five of the league’s top players named to the 2008 Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete First Team, as voted by the conference’s Sports Information Directors. Each of the five players named to the first team earned 2008 academic all-district honors. In all, 25 players were honored on the scholar-athlete teams.

Whorton earns first team honors for a third-consecutive season after earning CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American First Team honors in late February. The English and elementary education major carries a perfect 4.00 GPA. The Valley’s active leader in three-point makes – men or women -- is joined on the first team by Drake teammate Jill Martin, Evansville’s Rebekah Parker, Illinois State’s Kristi Cirone and Indiana State’s Laura Rudolphi, also a first-team Academic All-American.

Parker and Rudolphi are repeat MVC Scholar-Athlete Team selections. Rudolphi was the 2007 Prairie Farms Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Second team selections include Creighton’s Sara Cain and Ally Thrall, Evansville’s Shannon Novosel, Illinois State’s Maggie Krick and Indiana State’s Kelsey Luna.

The criteria for the scholar-athlete team balloting parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for Academic All-America voting. Nominees must be starters or important reserves, have played at least 75 percent of a team’s games, and must carry at least a 3.00 GPA (on a 4.0 scale).

Student-athletes must also have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at their institution (true and redshirt freshmen are not eligible) and must have completed at least one full academic year at the institution.

A total of 37 Valley student-athletes met the criteria for scholar-athlete honors in 2008.