Two Ravens Earn Weekly Northeast-10 Honors
Gardella named the men’s tennis Player of the Week for the first time;

Cabral earns baseball’s Freshman of the Week honors

RINDGE, N.H. (April 7, 2008) – Two Franklin Pierce University student-athletes were honored by the Northeast-10 Conference with weekly awards, the conference office announced on Monday afternoon. Senior Austin Gardella (Norwalk, Conn./Norwalk) was named the Northeast-10 men’s tennis Player of the Week, while outfielder Kyle Cabral (New Bedford, Mass./New Bedford) earned Freshman of the Week honors in baseball.

Gardella, who held down the team’s first singles and first doubles positions, went 4-0 in doubles action and 3-1 in singles play in four matches for Frankin Pierce last week. He began the week with a pair of victories against American International College on Monday afternoon, including an 8-7 tiebreaker win in first doubles action. Following a doubles win versus Saint Michael’s College on Wednesday night and two wins against Pace on Friday, Gardella capped his collegiate career with an 8-4 first-doubles win and a 6-1, 6-3 first-singles triumph as the Ravens defeated Saint Anselm College, 6-3, on Sunday.

Gardella finished his senior season with a 3-2 mark at first singles and a 5-5 mark overall in singles play. He also was superb in doubles matches on the year, as he combined with three different partners to go 8-2 playing exclusively at the first doubles flight. In four seasons with the Raven tennis team, Gardella amassed a 25-28 record in singles play and a 26-32 mark in doubles action.

The Raven men’s team completed its 2007-08 season with Sunday’s win at Saint Anselm, finishing with a 2-8 record both overall and in the Northeast-10.

Cabral batted .333 (5-for-15) with a double, home run, four runs scored and eight RBI in a 4-1 week for the nationally-ranked Ravens. Cabral was 3-for-6 with five RBI and a run scored in a doubleheader split with Bryant University on Thursday, including a 2-for-3 effort with a double and a grand slam in the victory over the Bulldogs. The leftfielder also went 2-for-3 with two RBI and three runs scored in game two of Sunday’s doubleheader sweep of Saint Michael’s College to complete the week.

Cabral has played in 14 games so far in his freshman season, earning a starting spot in Franklin Pierce’s last nine. He is batting .323 (10-for-31) with ten runs scored and ten RBI, while drawing three walks and boasting a .452 slugging percentage. Since joining the starting lineup, the Ravens are 8-1 and he is fourth on the team in that time with a .346 average (9-for-26) with seven runs scored, a double, homer and ten RBI.

Franklin Pierce (21-3, 6-1 NE-10), ranked fourth in this week’s pingbaseball.com Division II poll and eighth in the Collegiate Baseball magazine poll, completes a seven-game homestand tomorrow afternoon against NE-10 rivals University of Massachusetts Lowell at 3:30 p.m.