Bahamian Danisha Higgs, a junior at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, recently became the first track and field athlete from her school to be named to the Capital One CoSIDA Academic All-America Team.

A third team selection, Higgs reaches several other significant milestones with the award. She joins men's basketball player Bill Carey (1979) and football wide receiver Nick Cushman (2004) as the only Albright Lion student-athletes to earn both All-American and CoSIDA Academic All-American honors in the same season.

Higgs, who went to Lyford Cay International here in The Bahamas, is also the first Albright student-athlete to earn national academic honors in multiple years, following her 2011 USTFCCCA (US Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association) All-Academic Team selection (for maintaining a GPA (grade point average) over 3.30 and qualifying for the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) national championships.

To be eligible for Academic All-America consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.30 on a scale of 4.00, and have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution.

Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors in Divisions I, II, III and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), covering all NCAA championship sports. Higgs earned All-American honors with a fifth place finish in the 200 meters (24.73 seconds) at the NCAA Championships. She was also 10th in the 100 meters (12.11 seconds). Her top times for the season were 24.32 seconds in the 200m and 11.98 seconds in the 100m.

The 2013 USTFCCCA Mideast Region Track Athlete of the Year, Higgs won Middle Atlantic Corporation (MAC) Athlete of the Year honors in both indoor and outdoor track this season. She has won seven MAC individual championships in her Lion career, including four this year (Indoor - 60m, 100m; Outdoor - 100m, 200m).

A junior Biochemistry and French major, Higgs has maintained a 3.67 GPA as of the most recent available data. She is very involved around campus, having served as both a resident assistant and student tutor. Higgs is the Academic Excellence Chair for Phi MU and a departmental assistant for the Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures division.

Higgs is also a member of the French and pre-med honor societies, along with the American Chemical Society.

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