AUSTIN, Texas -- Women's court volleyball player Payton Gidney of Spring Hill College (SHC) has been named to the 2019 Google Cloud Academic All-America 3^rd team in NCAA Division II as announced by the Collegiate Sports Information Directors Association (CoSIDA) on Tuesday afternoon.
 
Gidney, a senior outside hitter from Grapevine, Texas majoring in Psychology, has earned three athletic letters with the Badgers. She was a member of the 2018 and 2019 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Commissioner's All-Academic Team as well as the 2017-18, and 2018-19 SIAC Volleyball All-Academic teams. In her career, Gidney made appearances in 381 sets of 131 matches with 575 kills, 114 aces, 65 assists, 939 digs and 60 (9/51) blocks.
 
In her four years as a starter for the Badgers, SHC built a 120-19 overall record and a dominating 54-0 conference record with SIAC Tournament Championships in her junior and senior campaigns. She is the fourth CoSIDA Academic All-America selection in SHC volleyball program history and the first since 2013 when setter Taryn Nash was the Academic All-America Volleyball Player of the Year in the NAIA.
 
The Google Cloud Academic All-America Award^® recognizes athletes holding a career GPA of 3.3 or higher while at the same time making significant on-field contributions to their team and is voted upon by the membership of CoSIDA.