FARMINGTON, Utah (May 7, 2021) – While only five players had been named Freshman of the Year by the Big Sky Conference since the award's debut in 2017, no player had simultaneously won the league's Most Valuable Player.
At least not until this season, as Northern Arizona freshman
Gina Dittmann shined throughout her debut to earn both honors from the Big Sky on Friday morning. Dittmann led a group of five honored players, as well as Lumberjacks head coach
Ewa Bogusz, in the conference's postseason award winners.
Bogusz earned her second consecutive Big Sky Coach of the Year award following NAU's championship last week, having also done so following NAU's conference title in 2019 while senior
Ellie Millard earned First Team honors in doubles for the third straight season.
Millard also landed a spot among the six First Team Singles honorees, alongside Dittmann and her doubles partner
Mimi Bland. Bland earned all-conference First Team Doubles honors for her play alongside Millard while Dittmann and
Elinor Beazley landed All-Big Sky Honorable Mention in doubles as well.
Freshman
Ava Neyestani also earned her first career Big Sky honors, landing on the Second Team as one of five freshmen included on the first or second teams.
Bland, Dittmann and Millard's inclusion together on the first team marked the first time one Big Sky school earned a trio of first-team honors since the 2014 season. The last time NAU had three first teamers was in 2008, when the conference did not award singles and doubles separately.
Millard's two honors moved her to five for her career, placing the senior in a tie for second with
Chiara Tomasetti and behind
Hanneke Lodewijks' seven. Winning Big Sky Player of the Week twice this season Millard moved up to sixth all-time on NAU's No. 3 singles list while also breaking into the program's top 10 for No. 1 doubles wins and overall doubles victories.
Dittmann's MVP award also made it back-to-back for NAU, with Tomasetti earning the honor in 2019, and joined Yvonne de Waal (2002), Vickie Gunnarsson (1999) and Yael Stuart (1998). The Freshman of the Year honor was NAU's first since Tomasetti split it in 2017 with Montana State's Chloe Goyette. A two-time Big Sky Player of the Week honoree, Dittmann's 14 wins on Court 1 places her eighth all-time at NAU and just three more away from tying for sixth.
The freshman's lone loss came to Arizona State's Ilze Hattingh, who ranked No. 37 nationally at the time of their meeting. Dittman dropped just two full sets all season, with the deciding third set against Hattingh being a 10-point tiebreaker. Dittmann was pushed to a third set by Wyoming's Maria Oreshkina and beat No. 70 Klara Kosan in straight sets for her first career victory over a ranked opponent.
Going 13-1 on Court 3 during her sophomore season, Bland immediately moved into ninth all-time on the court and halfway to tying Sylvia Pasahidis' record of 26 career wins at No. 3. Neyestani and Beazley made it four Lumberjacks to earn their first career All-Big Sky honors, with all six players in NAU's current lineup now earning an all-conference honor during their careers.
The Lumberjacks face the No. 5-seeded Pepperdine Waves in the first round of the NCAA Tournament today at 2 p.m. local time. Live video and stats can be found online at Pepperdine's
website while fans can follow along with the team on
Twitter,
Instagram and
Facebook.
For a look at the complete list of All-Big Sky Conference honorees, click
here.
