Four earn All-Conference bids
Carlson, Battipaglia, Gregory, and Krishnamachar named to this year’s NEWMAC All-Conference team.
Ambika M. Krishnamachar ’15 was voted as the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Athlete of the Year, as was announced by the league office on Tuesday afternoon. This is the fourth time in the last five seasons that the award has gone to an MIT student-athlete and the second consecutive year, after Emily Kuo ’13 earned the honor last year.
Krishnamachar earned an automatic spot on the NEWMAC All-Conference team, where she was joined by three of her teammates. Krishnamachar and Rachel A. Dias Carlson ’14 were named to the First Team, while Michelle Battipaglia ’15 and Victoria Gregory ’17 were tabbed to the Second Team. In addition to this, head coach Martin Desmarais was named Coach of the Year for the first time in his career. He is just the second MIT coach to earn this honor, the last of which was Melissa Hart in 2001.
The junior is appearing on the All-Conference team for the second time in her three years at MIT, after being tabbed to the Second Team as a freshman. Krishnamachar has had a strong season so far, and currently leads the Engineers with her 11 goals and four assists for 26 points and is second in the conference in both of those categories. She is one of a handful of Engineers to have started and played all 20 games so far this season.
This is the second time that Dias Carlson has been named All-Conference after appearing on the Second Team as a sophomore. Having played and started 19 games this season, she is second on the team with her three goals and six assists for 12 points. The senior was most recently named to the Capital One Academic All-District women’s soccer team as announced by the College Sports Information Directors of America for the third consecutive year.
Having played and started all 20 games this season, Battipaglia has scored two goals and three assists to total five points. This is the first time that she has been named to an All-Conference team. She scored the game-winning goal on Senior Day against Babson College when she scored the first goal of the game with just a minute remaining in the first half. She was also one of the three Engineers to connect on their penalty kick to help MIT advance over Babson at the semifinals of the NEWMAC tournament this past weekend.
Playing her first collegiate season as an Engineer, Gregory has played and started every game so far and is part of the aggressive defensive line that has allowed just nine goals all season. She scored her lone goal of the season in Tech’s 3-1 victory over Smith College late last month, firing the ball into the back of the net off a corner kick with five minutes remaining in the first half.
After sharing the regular season title with Wheaton College, the Engineers hosted the 2013 NEWMAC Tournament semifinals and finals over the weekend, advancing over Babson in penalty kicks, 3-0, before being edged by defending champion Springfield College in penalty kicks, 4-3, in the finals. On Monday afternoon, MIT received an at-large bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament and will make its third straight NCAA appearance when it travels to the College of New Jersey to face the Rochester Institute of Technology on Saturday, Nov. 16 at 1:30 p.m.