WORCESTER --- WPI Baseball's Jacob Hand (Niskayuna, NY) was selected to the 2024 NCAA Division III College Sports Communicators (CSC) Baseball Academic All-America Third Team as announced on Tuesday.

Hand becomes the second Engineer in program history to be named to the Academic All-America Team as Ryan Tropeano '19 was the first-ever to claim the national praise which was formerly known as the Google Cloud Academic All-America Team selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) before rebranding in 2022 to College Sports Communicators. Hand becomes the 69th different WPI student-athlete to become garner the status as an Academic All-America and it's the 106th time a WPI student-athletes has earned the honor.

The Niskayuna native was a two-time Academic All-District honoree before earning the All-America recognition in 2024. Hand collected New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) All-Conference first team honors following the regular season this spring before claiming All-Region laurels from D3baseball.com and the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). The veteran short stop is the first Engineer to earn regional distinction for three-consecutive seasons from the ABCA before being named the program's third ABCA All-American in June.

Hand topped the NEWMAC leaderboards in multiple categories as he led in runs scored (52), triples (4), home runs (12), RBI (48) and total bases (106) while starting in all 38 games en route to helping the Crimson and Gray return to postseason play for the first time since 2019. 

In the classroom, Hand is an electrical and computer engineering major that sports a 3.74 cumulative grade-point average and is a three-time NEWMAC All-Academic honoree.

The CSC Academic All-America Division III team boasts an overall average GPA of 3.85 with a 3.83 average for the first team. The senior infielder is one of three NEWMAC honorees as he was joined by MIT's Teddy Schoenfeld and Kyle Sonandres.

WPI (20-17-1) finished the regular season as the fifth seed to earn a spot in the NEWMAC Tournament Play-In for their first postseason berth since 2019. 

CSC Release