Women's Soccer | 2/6/2015 1:35:00 PM

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ—Senior Jenny Cislo of women's soccer was NJIT's recipient of the New Jersey Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (NJAIAW) Woman of the Year award, while the NJIT women's tennis team earned the National Girls and Women in Sports (NAGWS) Day Team Academic Award for spring sports.

Cislo was among the guests of honor at the annual NJAIAW Woman of the Year Luncheon held at Seton Hall University on February 1, while Natalia Melibeu accepted the Team Academic Award for Spring Sports on behalf of the tennis Highlanders, who posted a 3.607 team GPA, in celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Following the luncheon, each winner was recognized at halftime of the Seton Hall women's basketball game against St. John's.

Award winners were chosen by their institution's athletics department based upon athletic excellence, academic success and citizenship/community service. More than 150 high-school and junior and senior college student-athletes earned the award in 2015.

Cislo, from Crownsville, MD, is in the discussion for best women's soccer player in NJIT history. An anchor for the Highlander defense from the day she arrived on campus, she started all 76 games the team played in her four-year career. On top of that, she played every minute of every game for four seasons.

With NJIT playing as a women's soccer Independent her last two seasons, she was recognized by the website CollegeSportsMadness as a first-team performer among the Division I Independents in both 2013 and 2014. As a senior, she was selected as Defensive Player of the Year among the DI Independents.

Enrolled in NJIT's Albert Dorman Honors College, Cislo was named to the University Division Scholar All-East Region Team, compiling a 3.85 cumulative GPA. She was selected earlier in 2014 as one of five NJIT chemical engineering students to receive internships and scholarship grants from New Jersey-based Merck, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies.