Fuchs Named to ESPN The Magazine's Academic Team!

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Christoph Fuchs, a graduating senior on the Whitman College men's tennis team, has been voted for a second consecutive year to ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-District At-Large First Team.


Christoph Fuchs
Fuchs, who helped Whitman win its third straight Northwest Conference (NWC) title earlier this spring, is one 10 athletes chosen for the men's at-large team in the College Division of District VIII.

The district includes all NCAA Div. II/Div. III and NAIA schools in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, as well as British Columbia.

The at-large teams represent student athletes in a variety of sports, including golf, skiing, gymnastics, ice hockey, swimming, lacrosse and tennis.

Players on all-district at-large teams from around the nation are now eligible for election to the Academic All-America team. Fuchs was voted to the All-America Second Team a year ago.

The College Sports Information Directors of America administers the nominating and voting process for the Academic All-America program, which is in its 59th year and has honored about 15,000 students at all levels for all recognized NCAA sports.

Fuchs, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa national academic honor society, graduates from Whitman this Sunday and begins medical school studies later this summer at the Baylor College of Medicine. He and three siblings were home schooled by their parents, Valerie and Dr. Alex Fuchs of La Center, Wash.


Christoph Fuchs at Baylor College of Medicine
Fuchs is one of seven graduating seniors on the men's tennis team who sailed through four seasons at Whitman without losing a single regular season match to a Northwest Conference team. Whitman's win-loss record during those four seasons was 64-0.

Fuchs was a consistent winner in his time at Whitman, collecting more than 100 victories in singles and doubles.

A biology major with a minor in chemistry, Fuchs received Whitman Undergraduate Research funding two summers ago to work on breast cancer research at the University of Louisville’s Brown Cancer Center. His research that summer was the basis of his honors thesis on estrogen receptor protein modifications.

In the summer of 2007, Fuchs was a volunteer nurse's aide at a hospital in Offenburg, Germany, as part of a program required of German students for medical school eligibility. Fuchs, who is fluent in German, handled duties ranging from feeding patients and taking vital signs to shadowing physicians on their rounds and assisting with surgeries.

While at Whitman, Fuch has been a volunteer for a local AIDS clinic as well as the Friends of Walla Walla, which mentors at-risk youth.

Earlier this week, Fuchs was named Scholar-Athlete of the Year at the Blue Mountain Sports Awards, an awards program for high school and college student-athletes in the Walla Walla Valley. The awards program is run by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin newspaper.

Whitman is the top liberal arts & sciences college in the Northwest, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report survey of colleges and universities.