Vote for Ernst for the Senior CLASS Award!

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Loyola University Maryland senior outside hitter Ann Ernst was named one of 10 national finalists for the Senior Class Award.
 
An acronym for Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement for Staying in School^®, the Senior CLASS Award focuses on the total student-athlete and encourages students to use their platform in athletics to make a positive impact as leaders in their communities. 
 
To be eligible for the award, a student-athlete must be classified as an NCAA Division I senior and have notable achievements in four areas of excellence: community, classroom, character and competition. The complete list of finalists follows this release.
 
The finalists were chosen by a selection committee from the list of 30 candidates announced earlier in the season. Nationwide fan voting begins immediately, and fans are encouraged to vote on the Senior CLASS Award website through December 2. Fan votes will then be combined with media and Division I head coaches' votes to determine the winner. The Senior CLASS Award recipient will be announced during the 2019 NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball Championship in December.
 
Last year, Ernst became one of two Loyola players – joining teammate Katie Forsythe – who were named to the All-Patriot League First Team honors, marking the first time since the Greyhounds joined the conference in 2013 that a player has made a postseason all-star team.
 
Not only that, Ernst was named to the seven-player Academic All-Patriot League team for her combined excellence in the classroom and on the court.
 
In 2018, Ernst led the Patriot League in kills (426) and kills per set (3.58) last season while eclipsing the 1,000-kills mark for her career. The Chicago native had 13 double-doubles with 10 or more kills and digs in 2018 matches, and she posted double-digit kill totals 23 times. While putting up the best numbers of her career in terms of kills, she also saw a large jump in her hitting percentage. Heading into the 2018 season, Ernst had hit .125 in her first two campaigns, but last year, she swung at a .192 clip while having a career-low number of errors to go with a career-high number of attack attempts.
 
She was a two-time Patriot League Player of the Week in 2018, and she had five contests in which she totaled 20 or more kills. In her three years at Loyola, Ernst has tallied 326 or more kills in all three seasons and averaged at least 3.35 kills per set. She enters her senior season ranked ninth all-time at Loyola with 1,058 kills, and she also has 768 career digs.
 
This year, she leads the Greyhounds and the Patriot League in kills (326) and is second in the conference in kills per set (3.88) entering Loyola's October 25 match against Colgate. Through matches of October 23, Ernst is 18^th in NCAA Division I in total kills this season.
 
Earlier this month, Ernst became the first Loyola player since 2010, and just the fifth overall in program history, to record 1,000 or more kills and digs in a career.
 
On Tuesday night, Ernst set a career-high with 27 kills in a five-set match against American, marking the 13^th time in her career she has recorded 20 or more. In 108 career matches, Ernst has 81 with 10 or more kills and 44 with 15-plus.
 
In the classroom, Ernst has posted a 3.806 grade-point average through the end of her junior year, receiving dean's list honors all six semesters at Loyola. She is an engineering major at Loyola and, as an undergraduate research assistant, she studied how well and through what techniques physics students learn in early classes and the correlation to the number of students who remain in the STEM department at the university. She then assisted in redesigning the Physics I and II courses in order to increase the number of students that choose to major in STEM at Loyola, and she co-authored Introducing Physics Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PIE) into the first-year physics course for 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
 
Ernst has been a peer tutor for physics, calculus and several engineering courses. She also was chosen to be a part of Loyola's Green & Grey Society, a group of 14 seniors who serve as liaisons to the university president and the student body. The students are chosen for demonstrating excellence in academic, personal and spiritual integration and a commitment to leadership and service to Loyola University Maryland.