LAS CRUCES –New Mexico State men’s tennis junior Gustave Diep was named to the 2009 ESPN the Magazine Academic All-America District VI first team Thursday by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). This is the second-straight season that Diep has been named to the academic all-district first team, becoming the first player in program history to so.
Diep is an at-large selection and now qualifies for the all-America teams, which will be announced June 9. He is a native of Paris, France and carries a 4.0 cumulative G.P.A. in pre-medicine.
Head coach Don Ball expressed how proud he was of Diep not just for the honor, but for all the hard work he continuously puts in on and off the courts.
“First of all you’re talking about a superb human being,” Ball said. “He’s a great kid and is very talented athletically and we respect and encourage his academic side. Gustave excels in every class that he’s in and he has a goal that he wants to be a doctor, which he will be a very good one at that.”
Diep, who is a two-time all-WAC selection in singles (2007 and 2008), went 14-9 in singles dual matches for the Aggies in 2009. He won his first nine matches of the year and his 14 wins tied for the team lead. Combining the fall and spring seasons, Diep posted a 20-13 overall singles record and he was one of just two Aggies to win over 20 matches. He was a big component of leading NM State back into the national rankings for the first time since 2004, as the Aggies spent six weeks in the ITA polls this year.
In 2007, Diep was the ITA Mountain Region Rookie of the Year in a season that saw him win the prestigious ASU Thunderbird singles championship, Nov. 11, 2007. As a sophomore, Diep was named to his second-straight all-WAC second team and became just the fifth Aggie to earn all-conference accolades in back-to-back seasons. He was named an ITA Scholar Athlete at the end of the 2008 season and was selected to the Academic All-WAC team.
The senior-to-be enters his final year with NM State with 112 combined singles and doubles victories. In three seasons, he has posted a 34-21 (.618) singles record in dual matches for the Aggies while playing exclusively in the top half of the lineup.
