Valpo's Lodden & Milwaukee's Meeteer Named CoSIDA Academic All-Americans

Valparaiso's Nolan Lodden and Milwaukee's Luke Meeteer were both named to the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-American Team on Friday.

Lodden was named to the First Team, while Meeteer was named to the Third Team.

Lodden carved out a 3.94 grade-point average as an electrical engineering major in the classroom. On the diamond, he tallied team watermarks in hits (83), runs (57), doubles (18), and walks (36) in 2016. Lodden's hits and runs totals both ranked third in a single season in team history. He was a First Team All-Horizon League selection last month after garnering Second Team accolades in 2015, his first season with the Crusaders. Lodden logged two doubles as part of an 8-for-17 (.471) Horizon League Championship last week in Dayton. He added six runs scored and nine RBIs during his five-game offensive onslaught at Nischwitz Stadium to earn a spot on the All-Tournament Team.

For his two-year career with Valpo, Lodden batted .343 with a remarkable .446 on-base percentage in 110 games. He accumulated 102 runs scored, 30 doubles, 79 runs batted in, 74 walks, and 26 stolen bases.

Lodden is the first Valparaiso baseball player to earn First Team Academic All-American honors.

Meeteer becomes the 20th Academic All-American in Milwaukee Athletics history. He is just the third baseball player, with the only others being Sam Koenig – the 2015 Academic All-America of the Year – and Tim Patzman, a second-team honoree in 2010.

Meeteer capped his impressive Milwaukee career with a stellar senior season, earning First-Team All-Horizon League honors and was a leading candidate for league player of the year as well. He batted .362 with 44 runs batted in, scoring 53 runs while collecting 79 hits – including 16 doubles and a career-high six home runs. He slugged .537, recorded a .452 on-base percentage and stole 25 bases in 26 attempts.

He led the conference in stolen bases and was among the top five in numerous other categories: second in average, second in on-base percentage, second in total bases, third in slugging, third in runs scored, fifth in hits, sixth in walks, seventh in RBI and seventh in doubles.

He became the 12th player to record over 200 hits and finished at the top of the list with 273. He leaves the program as one of the best to ever play statistically. Over the course of the 2016 season, he broke school career records for stolen bases (was 73, finished with 98), at bats (was 803, finished with 854), runs scored (179/189), walks (tied with 99), games started (217/211) and games played (tied with 222). He also finished second in hit-by-pitch (41), tied for fourth in triples, fourth in total bases (373) and did not make an error in the field over his final 127 games (321 total chances; last in 2013).