CHARLESTON, S.C. – College of Charleston redshirt-junior third baseman Matt Leeds (Boca Raton, Fla.) has been named to the 2011 Capital One Academic All-America First Team as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

Leeds is a recent summa cum laude graduate with a bachelor's degree in accounting with minors in economics and finance from the CofC School of Business. He becomes only the fifth baseball student-athlete in program history and first since 2006 to be honored as an Academic All-American joining Joey Foxhall, Brett Anderson, Phillip Coker and Travis Howell.

The 2010 Southern Conference Player of the Year earned an impressive 3.93 grade-point average, the highest cumulative GPA among all CofC graduating student-athletes this past school year. On the field, he is currently batting .347 on the season with 18 home runs and a team-high 75 RBIs, good for fourth in the country. Last year, Leeds was second in the nation in RBI with a school single-season record 88 and helped lead the Cougars to the NCAA Myrtle Beach Regional. He was also tabbed an ABCA/Rawlings Third Team All-American and completed a successful internship with a hedge fund on Wall Street in the summer of 2010.

To be nominated for the team, a student-athlete must have a 3.3 or better cumulative GPA and be in their second year of competition and academically at a school. Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA, covering all NCAA championship sports. For more information about the Academic All-America® Teams program, please visit: www.cosida.com.

CofC advanced to the 2011 SoCon Baseball Tournament as the No. 5 seed and will face No. 4 Georgia Southern on Wednesday, May 25 at 9 p.m. (ET). The game will be broadcast on ESPN Radio 910-AM with Jeff McCarragher on the play-by-play. Live stats can be found on www.CofCSports.com and twitter updates are available by following at www.twitter.com/cofcsports.

2011 Capital One Academic All-America®
University Division Baseball Team as selected by CoSIDA

FIRST TEAM
Pos.    Name    School    Dist.    Yr.    Hometown    G.P.A.    Major

P    Danny Hultzen    Virginia    III    Jr.    Bethesda, Md.    3.37    History
P    Michael Roth    South Carolina    III    Jr.    Greer, S.C.    3.89    International Business
C    Matt Rice     Western Kentucky    IV    Sr.    Johnson City, Tenn.    4.00    Mechanical Engineering
INF  Paul Hoilman    East Tennessee State    IV    Sr.    Johnson City, Tenn.    3.95    Mathematics
INF  Matt Leeds    College of Charleston    III    Sr.    Boca Raton, Fla.    3.93    Accounting
INF  Drew Pettit     Canisius    I    Jr.    Fonthill, Ont., Can.    4.00    Economics
INF  Dusty Quattlebaum    Gardner-Webb    III    Jr.    Boiling Springs, N.C.    4.00    Sports Management
OF   Brandon Eckerle    Michigan State    IV    Sr.    Durand, Mich.    3.98    Gen. Bus. Ad., Pre-Law
OF   James Ramsey     Florida State    III    Jr.    Alpharetta, Ga.    3.87    Finance
OF   Chris Slater (2)    Baylor    VI    Sr.    Plano, Texas    3.98    Finance
DH   Marc Bourgeois     Southern Mississippi    VI    Sr.    Granby, Quebec,Can.    3.82    Construction Engineering

Capital One Academic All-American of the Year:  Matt Rice, Western Kentucky University