Middletown, PA - Penn State Harrisburg is proud to announce that three of their tennis players were named Intercollegiate Tennis Association scholar athletes for their work in the classroom during the 2007-08 school year. Karim Bataineh (Ibn Khuldoon National/Manama, Bahrain), Keith Lynn (Bloomsburg/Bloomsburg, PA), and Jessica Karl (Central Dauphin East/Harrisburg, PA) each received this honor, all for the first time.

Karim Bataineh and Keith Lynn were both freshman on the men´s tennis team this past year. Bataineh is an agriculture major who came to Penn State Harrisburg from Manama Bahrain, a country just east of Saudi Arabia. Fellow freshman, Lynn, is a business administration major who resides in Bloomsburg. Along with his academic success, Lynn was also a 1st Team North Eastern Athletic Conference tennis player in both singles and doubles competitions. Jessica Karl was a sophomore women´s tennis player last year, who majors in criminal justice and hails from Harrisburg.

The Intercollegiate Tennis Association has three criteria for being named a scholar athlete. The first is that each honoree must be a varsity letter winner. The second is that their grade point average (GPA) must be 3.5 or higher (on a 4.0 scale) during the current academic school year. The third is that each student-athlete must be enrolled in the current school for at least two semesters.