Nick Piacente, Michelle Grap Represent University of Delaware at CAA SAAC Leadership Summit
December 3, 2010
photos courtesy of Mark Campbell
WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Blue Hen men’s tennis player Nick Piacente and softball player Michelle Grap represented the University of Delaware at the 2010 Colonial Athletic Association Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) Leadership Summit held on November 7-8.
Piacente and Grap were joined at the summit by UD Assistant Director of Student Services for Athletes Rachel Fineberg, who serves as a SAAC advisor.
The first day of the event, whose theme was “Step Up,” featured a workshop presented by University of Virginia facilitators Phil Gates and Jordan Shaffer. During the workshop the student-athletes and advisors learned bystander intervention techniques, which can be used when someone is in need of assistance.
The second day began with CAA Commissioner Tom Yeager meeting with the student-athletes, while the advisors had a roundtable discussion. The group then met as a whole to discuss sportsmanship, ideas to enhance the CAA Championships, recognition of CAA senior student-athletes, student-athlete welfare issues, the CAA website, priority registration for student-athletes, the Student Assistance Fund, and a review of selected proposed NCAA legislation.
At the conclusion, student-athlete leaders were challenged to bring back topics and best-practices discussed at the meeting to the campus level. Once they have met with their respective peers the student-athletes are scheduled to report positive changes on campus back to the conference office so that the results can be shared with CAA Athletic Directors from around the league.
Piacente, a mechanical engineering major at Delaware with a minor in mathematics, is a three-year letterwinner with the Blue Hen men’s tennis team. After winning his only singles match as a freshman, he went 13-5 during the 2008-09 year and 6-4 as a junior. Piacente also has 12 doubles wins in his career, and he won the Swarthmore Invitational Flight A doubles title and the Old Dominion Tournament Flight D-1 title as a sophomore. Piacente, who served as SAAC secretary last year, went 4-6 in singles play this fall and has won 24 career singles matches.
Grap, an animal sciences/pre-veterinary medicine major at Delaware, enters her final season as the Blue Hens’ career leader with 22 home runs. She batted .306 as a sophomore, when she led the team with 20 runs batted in and was named Second Team All-CAA. Grap started all 51 games at shortstop for the Blue Hens a year ago, belting a UD single season record and CAA-best 13 home runs. She also paced the squad with 80 total bases, 30 RBI and 24 walks wile batting .232 on the season. Grap, a three-year letterwinner who played third base her first two seasons before shifting to shortstop, will enter her senior year this spring ranked sixth in Delaware history with 80 career RBI.
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