May 4, 2005
Athletics: Jim Phillips, Kalyn Leveto Named YSU
Athletes of the Year
Youngstown
-- Senior outfielder Jim
Phillips (Oregon, Ohio) and senior
diver Kalyn Leveto (Warren, Ohio)
have been named the 2004-05 The
Vindicator YSU Male and Female
Athletes of the Year. Phillips and
Leveto, along with numerous other
Penguin student-athletes will be
honored at the Forum Health
Scholar-Athlete Banquet on Thursday
night at 6 at the Kilcawley Center
on the Youngstown State campus.
At the banquet on Thursday, more than 130 student-athletes
will be honored for recording
3.0-or-better cumulative grade-point
averages. Also being presented are
various Horizon League school awards
and Student-Athlete Advisory Council
Leadership Awards.
Phillips is the first Penguin baseball player to be named The
Vindicator YSU Male Athlete of the
Year with his selection this year.
Phillips and his teammates have had a banner regular season
currently leading the Horizon League
with a 7-1 mark, while winning 22 of
their last 27 overall contests. He
leads the Horizon League with a .393
batting average while ranking third
with a career-high 48 hits in his 38
games played. The only Penguin to
start every game this season, he has
recorded 27 RBI, 20 runs scored,
nine doubles and two home runs.
Of his 38 games played, he has been on base in 34 contests
and earlier this season he had a
14-game hitting streak. Showing his
versatility, he has started in left
field, right field and at third
base. He leads the team with 14
multiple-hit contests.
Entering the homestretch of the
season, the Penguins have 14
regular-season games remaining,
along with the May 25-28 Horizon
League Tournament and possibly the
June 3-6 NCAA Regionals for the
second consecutive year.
One of the team’s captain, he is the lone active senior on
the YSU roster. Throughout his
career, Phillips has shown his
ability to be a team player and
leader. He is a career .314 hitter
while recording 173 hits, 98 runs
scored, 84 RBI, 41 doubles and 11
home runs all in 178 games played.
Ranking fifth in career doubles in
school history, he has shot to place
in the top five in career games
played, hits and at bats before the
year is through.
As a junior, Phillips helped the Penguins win their first
postseason conference championship
in school history with an amazing
run in the Horizon League
Tournament. YSU beat the one, two
and three seeds during the
tournament clinching the
championship with a 10-1 victory
over Cleveland State in the title
game. The win sent the Guins to the
Austin Regional for games against
top-ranked Texas and Texas
Christian.
In regional action, he was impressive hitting .714 (5-of-7)
with two home runs, five RBI, two
runs scored and had two doubles to
be named to the all-tournament team.
Excelling off the diamond as well, Phillips owns a 3.19
grade-point average as an Integrated
Social Studies major.
Leveto has been a model of consistency throughout her career
as a member of the Youngstown State
swimming and diving program and
becomes the second diver in the past
four years to be named The
Vindicator Female Athlete of the
Year.
A diver, Leveto is a four-time
Horizon League individual event
champion and has been named Academic
all-conference three times. On two
occasions during her career, she was
named the Horizon League Diver of
the Year. She also appeared in the
NCAA Zone C Diving Championships in
three of her four years.
In her final campaign in 2004-05, Leveto won the one-meter
event at the conference meet after
placing fourth in the three-meter
competition. During her senior year,
she won an impressive 25 one or
three-meter diving events at various
meets.
At the Horizon League Championships in February, Leveto
showed what she was made of. After a
disappointing three-meter
performance where she finished in
fourth -- her lowest finish since
her first year -- she rebounded two
days later to win the one-meter
event by more than 25 points and set
a Horizon League record in the
process with a score of 284.00.
As a junior in 2003-04, she was named the Horizon League
Diver of the Year winning the
three-meter competition and placing
second in the one meter. She won the
three-meter event with a score of
449.20 and came up short in the one
meter with a score of 238.70, just
three points out of first. For the
year, she went undefeated on the
three-meter board winning nine times
while she also won the one-meter on
seven occasions.
As a sophomore in 2002-03, she picked up her first Horizon
League Diver-of-the-Year Award after
winning both the one-meter and
three-meter events. In the one-meter
she had a score of 243.00 while in
the three meters she had a score of
416.40.
Excelling off the diving board as well, Leveto owns a 3.30
grade-point average as a Finance
major. |
