Chaplin Named ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District
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SWARTHMORE, Pa. - Swarthmore College senior Vernon Chaplin (Indian Springs, Ala. / Indian Springs) has been named to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District II College Division Men's Track & Field/Cross Country first team, as announced by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
The District II College Division consists of all NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III and NAIA colleges and universities in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. To be nominated for the team, a student-athlete must be at least a sophomore with a 3.2 cumulative grade-point average and a starter or significant reserve on his or her team.
This is the second straight year Chaplin was placed on the District II first-team--he is the lone male representative from the Centennial Conference. He will now be placed on the national ballot along with the other 11 track & field/cross country athletes from District II.
Chaplin has racked up a host of awards following his senior year at the College. He received the Lew Elverson Award (given to the top junior or senior male athlete at Swarthmore), was named the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Men's Performer of the Year, the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Track & Field Performer of the Year and selected for Centennial Academic Honor Roll a ninth time.
Chaplin, a senior astrophysics major in the honors program, is a National Merit Scholarship winner and Sigma Xi member. He interned at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.), co-authoring paper "Update on electron-cloud power deposition for the Large Hadron Collider arc dipoles" and was the 2005 winner of national Barry Goldwater Scholarship given in recognition of academic merit - from a field of more than 1,000 mathematics, science, and engineering students. Following graduation, Chaplin will travel to Vietnam to teach English for a year.
Chaplin captained the cross country to fourth at the 2006 Centennial Championships and a ninth-place finish out of 39 schools at the 2006 NCAA Division III Mid-East Regional.
Already an established star on the track, Chaplin solidified his status as one of the top runners in the Swarthmore history. He completes his collegiate running career with four school records--the indoor mile, the indoor 800 meters, the indoor distance medley relay and the outdoor 4x800 relay--and is an 10-time Centennial Conference Championship medalist (the most recent being a bronze medal in 2007 on the 4 x 800 meter relay).