May 23, 2012

BALTIMORE, MD - Johns Hopkins water polo junior Alex Whittam has been named to the CoSIDA/Capital One Academic All-District At-Large First Team. This is his first appearance on the All-District First Team and he is just the third player in program history to earn academic all-district honors. Whittam will now move on to the All-America ballot with the national team scheduled to be announced June 5.

The District II region in includes Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The be nominated for the CoSIDA Academic All-America program, a student-athlete must be at least a sophomore with a 3.3 or higher cumulative grade point average and be a starter or significant reserve. The Men's At-Large Team consists of athletes from the following sports: fencing, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming, tennis, volleyball, water polo and wrestling.

Whittam is a three-time ACWPC All-America selection, earning first team honors in 2010 and second team honors in 2009 and 2011. He is a three-time CWPA All-South selection and was named the 2009 CWPA Southern Division Rookie of the Year. Whittam tied for the team lead this season with 72 goals, while dishing out a program-record 55 assists. He also finished with 54 steals (third on team) and drew 57 ejections (second best on team). He broke the program record for career assists this season and now has 125 entering his final season. He ranks seventh in school history in career goals (176) and second in steals (148). This season, Whittam notched 13 hat tricks, including four five-goal outings, and had at least one point in all but one game in 2011. A two-time captain, Whittam has led Hopkins to 51 wins, two Division III Eastern Championships and a runner-up finish at the 2009 ECAC Championship in his three seasons.

Out of the pool, Whittam is majoring in public health natural sciences with a pre-medical focus and has a 3.31 cumulative GPA. He is Vice President of Community Outreach for the Unite for Sight Chapter at Johns Hopkins and in January 2011, traveled to Ghana to aid ophthalmologists in cataract surgeries. He is also the Philanthropy Chair for Phi Kappa Psi. Whittam works as a research assistant for Dr. Luis Garza at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Dermatology. His current project with Dr. Garza aims to find a way to promote the regeneration of the palmo/plantar type skin cells at typical soft skin areas. This project is aimed towards amputees who lose such limbs as their forearm. This past summer, Whittam worked as a research assistant for Dr. William Haskell at the Stanford School of Medicine Prevention Research Center. Working with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Matthew Smuck, he measured the amount of activity in patients with lumbar spinal canal stenosis before and after surgery, in order to pinpoint the effectiveness of the surgery and ultimately improve the technique to achieve the best results.