MOBILE, Ala. — South Alabama center Joseph Scelfo has been named to the Rimington Trophy watch list for the 2015 fall season, the Rimington Trophy Committee announced Wednesday.
Scelfo is one of 63 players on the list and one of only three from the Sun Belt Conference.
Football: Scelfo on Rimington List
The Rimington Trophy is presented each year to the most outstanding center in NCAA Division I-A college football. The award is named for Dave Rimington, a consensus first-team All-America center at Nebraska in 1981 and 1982.
Scelfo, a 6-foot-1, 295-pound junior from Bogart, Georgia, has also been named to Phil Steele Publications’ preseason All-Sun Belt team and to Athlon Sports’ preseason All-Sun Belt second team this summer.
He enters his second season as South Alabama’s starting center. In 2014, he was one of two Jaguar offensive linemen to start all 13 games as South Alabama earned the first bowl invitation in program history, to the inaugural Raycom Media Camellia Bowl.
Scelfo graded out at 80 percent or better in six games last season and posted the team’s highest grade five times. He earned an 88 percent grade in the Jaguars’ win over Troy, one of two games in which he received the coaches’ offensive line award, and graded 87 percent against Bowling Green in the Camellia Bowl. Against Southeastern Conference opponents, he led the team with grades of 83 percent against South Carolina and 81 percent against Mississippi State.
Rimington Trophy finalists will be announced on Dec. 7. The winner will be announced Jan. 16, 2016, at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Women’s Golf: Three Named WGCA All-American Scholars
Three South Alabama women’s golfers were named 2014-15 Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholars: Elisa Axelsen, Ingrid Hagen and Madison Connell.
The honor requires a grade-point average of at least 3.50 and participation in at least half of the team’s tournaments.
Hagen earned the distinction for the fourth consecutive season, while it was the first for both Axelsen and Connell. It is the 10th straight academic year that South Alabama has placed three or more student-athletes on the WGCA Division I All-American Scholar team. Since the 2005-06 academic year, 15 Jaguars have received the honor a combined 39 times.
On the course, Axelsen recorded one top-10 finish and two top-20 finishes this season. Hagen had three top-20 finishes in her senior season, and Connell competed in seven tournaments as a freshman.
Softball: Fico, Campbell Pitching for Akron Racers
South Alabama assistant softball coach Rachelle Fico and former Jaguar Hannah Campbell, now a graduate assistant at USA, are pitching for the Akron Racers of National Pro Fastpitch this summer.
Akron is third in the NPF standings at 12-12, behind league-leading Chicago (17-6) and second-place USSSA Pride. The Racers have won eight of their last 12 games.
Fico is 1-0 in her lone appearance of the season, a complete-game effort against the Dallas Charge on July 1. She struck out four, walked one and allowed one earned run on four hits in a 9-1 win, Akron’s largest margin of victory this season.
Campbell is 0-2 with six strikeouts and a 6.24 ERA in four appearances, allowing 11 earned runs on 18 hits in 12 1/3 innings. Her first appearance came in Akron’s May 30 season opener against the Pennsylvania Rebellion, when she entered a scoreless game in the fifth inning and allowed five earned runs on three hits in two-thirds of an inning. Akron lost 6-3.
CBS Sports Network is carrying expanded coverage of the 2015 NPF season, including the Racers’ games against the Rebellion on Aug. 10-11 and the NPF Championship at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, on Aug. 14-18.
