DEKALB, Ill. --Northern Illinois University's Emily Naegele added a distinguished honor to her list of accolades as she was named to the College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America® Division I Softball Team CoSIDA announced today.

"This is probably one of the highest honors she's received, just because it's a culmination of both the academic and athletic success she's had, not just this year, but in her entire career," said NIU head coach Christina Sutcliffe. "This wasn't a one-year thing for Naegele. She's just put together an absolutely phenomenal college career."

A native of Oak Forest, Ill., Naegele earned first team honors and is the first Huskie to to do so since 1995 when Amy Scharlau was named first-team Academic All-American as an infielder. Naegele earned her degree in pre-physical therapy in May and carried a 3.90 GPA during her NIU career.

"Being a pre-PT major is tough," Sutcliffe said. "It's tough to balance that schedule of academics and athletics. I think the key thing for Naegele is that she always kept her goals in mind, both on and off the field.

"Becoming a physical therapist is very important for her. She set herself up doing that extra work to put her in graduate school right away. She's going to be successful in anything she does."

A First-Team All-Great Lakes Region honoree, Naegele has started all 165 games for NIU during her three-year career, a majority of them at catcher. She set five school records, including single season marks for home runs (20), RBIs (56), slugging percentage (.894) and career records for home runs (32) and RBIs (144). In addition to setting school records, Naegele also established career highs in hits (61), batting average (.404), walks (35) and total bases in 2016. She also had a career-low 27 strikeouts.

Naegele, who helped lead NIU to its first Mid-American Conference West Division crown since 2000, recorded 19 multi-RBI, 18 multi-hit and three multi-home run games. She hit her first career grand slam at Loyola and drove in a career-high five runs, going 2-for-2 with two home runs in a 13-9 victory over Elon on the Huskies' spring break trip.

A First-Team All-MAC selection, Naegele earned a spot on the MAC's All-Tournament Team after going 2-for-6, hitting a home run in each of the first two games, walking four times and driving in four runs.

Naegele is the fifth Huskie softball player in school history to earn first-team honors. In addition to Scharlau, Sue Krause, Beth Schrader and Julie Sexton. Krause is the school's only three-time first team selection earning the honor each year from 1986-88.

With Naegele's selection to this year's CoSIDA All-America® first team, NIU has placed five student-athletes on the first team in five different sports since 2010. Kyle Knotek of men's soccer began the run and Kristin Hoffman of volleyball and football's Alan Baxter continued it in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Guard Amanda Corral of women's basketball was a first-team selection last year.

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