AUSTIN, Texas—For the second straight year Villanova University softball pitcher/utility Paige Rauch (Windsor, N.Y.) has earned one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed upon a collegiate student-athlete. Rauch was a third team selection on Tuesday afternoon to the 2022 Academic All-America® softball team selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). She is one of 14 student-athletes among the 37 total honorees on the Division Academic All-America Team® who is a repeat winner of the award.
 
Rauch was previously named to the District 2 Academic All-District Team by CoSIDA last month and from there moved on to earn consideration of the national ballot for Academic All-America® recognition. Student-athletes are eligible for Academic All-District honors by having a minimum 3.30 cumulative grade point average in addition to being a significant contributor to their teams. Nominations are submitted by each institution and are voted on by sports information directors from around the country. Over the years Villanova has had 10 softball student-athletes achieve Academic All-America® distinction. Among them, Rauch joins Dona Hurley (1983, 1984) and Sara Carlson (2001, 2002) as two-time Academic All-Americans.
 
The Division I Academic All-America® Softball Team represents the most elite members of the sport nationwide for their combination of academic achievement and athletic performance. This honor is a fitting one for Rauch, who has been a dominant force on the field for the Wildcats over the past four years while standing out for her success in the classroom. Rauch enrolled in a five-year BA/MA program at Villanova and was a double major in Political Science and Communication.
 
During her career Rauch has been a two-time Easton/NFCA Scholar-Athlete honoree and a three-time selection to the BIG EAST All-Academic Team, with each of those awards yet to be announced for the current season. She has appeared on the Athletic Director's Honor Roll for having a semester GPA of 3.2 or higher all eight grading periods of her Wildcats career and was previously named a 2020-21 winner of the BIG EAST Institutional Scholar-Athlete of the Year honor. That award came with a $2,000 scholarship that can be applied to graduate or professional studies.  She was also a 2020-21 recipient of the Villanova Senior Student-Athlete of the Year award.
 
Rauch set 15 school records during her four years wearing the Wildcats uniform, including eight career marks and seven single-season standards. In her final season of collegiate eligibility this year, Rauch went 17-7 with a 2.31 ERA, 14 complete games, six shutouts and 167 strikeouts over 151 1/3 innings in the pitchers' circle. As a batter, she slashed .296/.403/.542 with team highs of 44 runs scored and 34 runs batted in. Rauch had 21 extra-base hits while leading Villanova with three triples and 10 home runs. She also drew a team-high 29 walks and stole five bases without being caught. Rauch started all 56 games of the season, with exactly half of those starts (28) as a pitcher. She also made starts at first base, second base, both corner outfield positions and as the offensive player.
 
In the span of less than 48 hours at this year's BIG EAST conference tournament, Rauch put together one of the most dominant stretches of her entire career. She led the Wildcats to their second straight BIG EAST title and a return trip to an NCAA regional while being named the Most Outstanding Player of the conference championship for the second consecutive year. Rauch threw 20 scoreless innings over three days at the tournament, including complete game shutouts over Butler in the quarterfinals and DePaul in the semifinal round. Those games were each pitchers' duels, with the third-seeded Wildcats defeating #2 Butler by a 2-0 margin and #4 DePaul in eight innings by a single run with a walk-off in the bottom of the eighth. Rauch came back for a third straight day and pitched five scoreless innings in a 3-0 victory over #1 seed and regular season champion Connecticut in the championship game.
 
At the end of the season Rauch was named an NFCA Mideast All-Region first team honoree and a first team All-BIG EAST selection. It is the third time in her career that she earned each of those accolades, while she was previously a first team Atlantic 10 selection and a Mid-Atlantic first team all-region choice as a freshman at Fordham. Rauch was a stalwart on the BIG EAST weekly award releases during her career. She garnered recognition from the conference an incredible 31 times over her four years, including being the Pitcher of the Week on 11 occasions to go along with two Player of the Week accolades and 18 times being named to the weekly BIG EAST Honor Roll.
 
Rauch ends her collegiate career as the all-time Villanova record holder for career on-base percentage (.499), slugging percentage (.749), OPS (1.248), runs scored (167), runs batted in (157), home runs (49), total bases (426) and walks (126). She also holds single-season records for on-base percentage (.561, 2019); slugging percentage (.935, 2019); OPS (1.496, 2019); home runs (18, 2019); total bases (145, 2019); walks (45, 2021) and shutouts (nine, 2019).
 
In addition to each of those records, Rauch is one of eight pitchers in school history to throw at least two career no-hitters. She threw the second no-hitter of her career this season in a 4-0 win at Providence when she also went 2-for-4 at the plate with a double, a run scored and a run batted in. Ten days before that game she became the Wildcats career record holder in both runs scored and RBI in the same game when she was 3-for-4 with two runs scored, four RBI, a home run and a walk in a 9-1 win at Creighton. Rauch also pitched a two-hitter with eight strikeouts in that contest while notching her 27^th game at Villanova where she hit a home run as the starting pitcher.
 
Since the Academic All-America® program began in 1972-73, Villanova has had 56 student-athletes be recognized a total of 74 times with Academic All-America® honors.