Wabash College senior running back Mason Zurek has been named to the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-America Division III football first team.
 
Zurek, a rhetoric major and history minor, maintains a 3.82 cumulative grade point average. He is a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and the Lambda Pi Eta national honor society, and studied in the Wabash Summer Business Immersion program in 2014. He plans to attend law school after graduating in May.
 
On the field, Zurek has rewritten the Little Giants' record book. Last week he ran for 183 yards to become the Wabash all-time rushing leader with 3,307 and owns the single-season rushing record at Wabash with 1,947 yards entering this Saturday's NCAA DIII Football Playoffs quarterfinal game at the University of St. Thomas. He has also run for a single-season record 22 touchdowns this year. Zurek added single-season marks this year for all-purpose yards (2,089), total points scored (144), touchdowns scored (24), and 100-yard rushing games in a season (10).
 
Zurek opened the first round of the playoffs by rushing for a single-game record 326 yards against Albion College. That effort came one week after he first broke the longtime Wabash game record of 265 yards (Stan Huntsman in 1952) by running for 278 yards against DePauw in the Monon Bell Classic victory.
 
The 24 members of the CoSIDA Academic All-America Division III football first team maintain an average GPA of 3.89.
 
Wabash student-athletes have been honored 26 times by CoSIDa as Academic All-Americans.
 
CoSIDA began the distinguished Academic All-America program in the 1950's, and since then, has honored thousands of deserving student-athletes from numerous sports and across all divisions with these elite Academic All-America scholar-athlete honors. Currently, CoSIDA honors Academic All-Americas in 12 sports. The CoSIDA Division III Academic All-America® program is being financially supported by the NCAA Division III national governance structure, to assist CoSIDA with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2015-16 Division III Academic All-America® teams program.