WEEK of: SEPTEMBER 7-13, 2009
Sophomore forward
WALTER AVANS (Roselle Park, NJ/Union Catholic), the Most Valuable Player of the 2009 NJCU Liberty Cup championship, has been named
New Jersey Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Week for week two of the 2009 season, after he posted a career four-game span, scoring eight goals for 16 points with one game-winner. He is the NJCU Men's Athlete of the Week for the first time in his career.
The award is the first in Avans’ career and he is the first NJCU men’s player to be selected since Jonathan Bilbao on November 5, 2007.
In four games for NJCU (5-1-1), Avans had 24 shots, including 14 on goal and the Gothic Knights won all four contests by a combined margin of 27-2. Half of his goals for the week were unassisted tallies.
In the NJAC statistical rankings, Avans leads the NJAC in shots (36) and is tied with Ramapo College’s Rob Santaniello for the league lead in total goals (9). Avans ranks second in the NJAC in points (18)—just one off the conference lead—and second in points per game (2.57) and goals per game (1.29). He is tied for fourth in shots per game (4.00) and seventh in game-winning goals (1).
In a 10-0 win over York College (NY) on September 9, Avans scored twice, and was the lone player with multiple goals. He tallied the only two NJCU would need, notching back-to-back markers in a span of 48 seconds (19:50 and 20:38) for a 2-0 lead.
In a 5-1 win over York College (NY) on September 10, Avans tied the single-game school record for goals with four and collected the first hat trick by an NJCU player in two years. He scored the first, third, fourth and fifth goals of the game. Three of his four goals were unassisted.
With the four-goal effort, Avans tied the school record originally set in 1974 by Hall-of-Famer Jose ‘Pepe’ Casias, equaled in 1975 by Andrew Onyewuenyi, before most recently being tied on September 27, 1997 by Alex Schuster. He also became the sixth player in school history to collect at least eight points in a game, one shy of the program mark of nine accomplished twice. Avans notched the first hat trick since Christian Acuna, now an assistant coach, did so on September 16, 2007.
In NJCU’s 9-0 rout over The College of Staten Island in the opening round of the Liberty Cup on September 12, Avans registered his third consecutive game with multiple goals, upping his weekly total to eight, as he scored the second and third goals of the game within a span of 3:05. One of the goals was unassisted.
He had two shots (one on goal) in 61 minutes against New York City College of Technology on September 13 in the second round of the Liberty Cup, as the Knights defeated the Yellow Jackets, 3-1, to win the event title for the fourth time in five opportunities (2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009; third in 2007).
