Kegelman Named <i>ESPN The Magazine</i> Academic All-American of the Year for At-Large Team

Kegelman Named ESPN The Magazine Academic All-American of the Year for At-Large Team

2009 Graduate is Just Second in Johns Hopkins History to Earn the Honor

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2009 graduate <b>John Kegelman</b> graduated with a 4.00 GPA in mechanical engineering.

2009 graduate John Kegelman graduated with a 4.00 GPA in mechanical engineering.

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June 9, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD - John Kegelman (Yorktown, VA/Tabb), a 2009 graduate of Johns Hopkins University has been named the 2009 ESPN The Magazine College Division Academic All-American of the Year and a First Team Academic All-American for the Men's At-Large Team. Kegelman joins Kathy Darling (Track & Field/Cross Country / 2003) as the only two student-athletes in Johns Hopkins history to earn the honor.

Kegelman is the seventh swimmer in program history to earn Academic All-America honors and is the first to earn first team honors since David Lofthus in 2003. He brings the program's total All-America honors to nine.

A two-time captain for the Johns Hopkins men's swim team, Kegelman earned All-America honors five times and guided the Blue Jays to three top 10 finishes at the NCAA Championships, including a runner-up finish in 2008. At the 2009 NCAA Championships, he earned First Team All-America honors in the 200 and 400 Medley Relays as both relay teams posted the second fastest times in program history. Kegelman posted the two fastest times on the team this season in the 100 Breast and two of the three fastest in the 200 Breast.

Kegelman was recently awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and will pursue a Ph.D. in the area of robotics within the field of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. He is a Dean's List student, a member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and the Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Society. A mechanical engineering major with a minor in entrepreneurship and management, Kegelman graduated in May with a 4.00 cumulative GPA.

Last spring Kegelman applied for and received a Provost's Undergraduate Research Award (PURA) for his project titled "Fluid Mechanical Evaluation of Arm Stroking Patterns in Front Crawl Swimming." He videotapes swimmers, including volunteers from the varsity team at Hopkins, wearing full-body Speedo fastskins with LEDs attached in specific places on the arm and chest. Kegelman then uses video analysis methods that he and his faculty sponsor, Dr. Lester Su, developed to track the hand and arm trajectory as it pulls through the water. He compares each stroke to see how "repeatable" it is, i.e. whether a swimmer has a set trajectory that each stroke follows, or he changes his trajectory dynamically based on flow conditions around the hand. Kegelman presented his results at the PURA poster session this past spring.

In addition, Kegelman was a summer scholar at the NASA Langley Research Center. During this research project, he collected and compiled experimental data from a wind tunnel test on the separation event of the experimental flight test vehicle for one of NASA's crew launch vehicles. He has also interned at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Kegelman was an undergraduate research assistant for the Laboratory for Experimental Fluid Dynamics as a sophomore. And for the last two years, he has served as a teaching assistant for the Mechanical Engineering Freshman Laboratory.

Sports eligible under the at-large program include: women's bowling, women's crew, men's and women's fencing, women's field hockey, men's and women's golf, men's and women's gymnastics, men's and women's ice hockey, men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's rifle, men's and women's skiing, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's tennis, men's volleyball, men's and women's water polo, and men's wrestling.

To be eligible for Academic All-America® consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director.

Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA, covering all NCAA championship sports.

ESPN The Magazine - winner of the 2006 and 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence - is a provocative and innovative sports publication. Full of insight, analysis, impact and wit, the oversized biweekly with a circulation of 1.9 million looks ahead to give fans a unique perspective on the world of sports.