HAVERFORD, Pa. – Sam Yarosh has become the 29th student-athlete at Haverford to receive a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Haverford's most recent award winner earned the honor following the conclusion of the men's soccer season.
Yarosh is the third player in the history of the program to be awarded the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship, joining Christopher Lee '89 and Rich Billings '00 as former Haverford men's soccer players to garner this prestigious recognition. As an athletic department, Haverford has had at least one student-athlete earn an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship during each of the past nine academic years.
The NCAA awards up to 174 postgraduate scholarships annually, 87 each for men and women. Recognizing student-athletes who excel academically and athletically and who are at least in their final year of intercollegiate athletics, the scholarships are awarded for fall sports, winter sports and spring sports. There are 29 scholarships (one-time grants of $7,500) available for both men and women each sports season (fall, winter, spring).
The 2015 men's soccer season was the program's best year of the NCAA era. The Fords won the Centennial Conference regular season and tournament championships before advancing all the way to the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight as they hosted both the NCAA Regional and Sectional Rounds on Walton Field. The Fords finished the year with a program-record 18 victories. This record-breaking campaign included 16 straight wins in which the Fords wrapped up an unblemished Centennial Conference season and won two games in the NCAA Tournament after receiving one of just three first round byes.
A two-year team captain who helped guide the men's soccer program to its first Centennial Conference Championship in program history as a freshman, Yarosh ends his decorated career as a first-team D3Soccer.com All-American and a first-team NSCAA Scholar All-American. Additionally, Yarosh was named the program's first Centennial Conference Player of the Year and Scholar-Athlete of the Year. He went on to be named a CoSIDA first-team All-American and the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Performer of the Year for men's soccer – an award that spans every division in the Philadelphia area.
Yarosh started all 22 games for the Centennial Conference Champions and led the conference in both goals (17) and points (39). His seven game-winning goals on the season set a new program record for the most in a single season. That mark was tied by teammate Will Corkery as he also netted seven game-winners during the historic season. Yarosh finished the year with a goal in 13 different contests. Each time he found the back of the net, the final result was a Haverford victory. Yarosh was most recently announced as one of Haverford's 16 Ambler Scholar-Athletes. He will graduate from Haverford College this spring with a degree in physics.
The NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship was created in 1964 to promote and encourage postgraduate education by rewarding the Association's most accomplished student-athletes through their participation in NCAA championship and/or emerging sports. Athletics and academic achievements, as well as campus involvement, community service, volunteer activities and demonstrated leadership, are evaluated. An equitable approach is employed in reviewing each applicant's nomination form to provide opportunity to all student-athlete nominees to receive the postgraduate award, regardless of sport, division, gender or race. In maintaining the highest broad-based standards in the selection process, the program aims to reward those individuals whose dedication and effort are reflective of those characteristics necessary to succeed and thrive through postgraduate study in an accredited graduate degree program.