SAN FRANCISCO – Tremendous in the classroom as he is on the court, Stanford's Axel Geller has been named the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year for men's tennis.
The award is presented in each of the 24 sports sponsored by the Pac-12 and was established to honor student-athletes that are standouts both academically and in their sports discipline.
Geller is the fifth Cardinal player to be named Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year, joining Ryan Thacher (2012), Denis Lin (2013), Sameer Kumar (2019) and William Genesen (2021). Stanford earns the honor in back to back years for the second time, while the Cardinal has won three of the last four accolades.
Geller is part of a select group of Stanford student-athletes to have been named both an All-American and an Academic All-American, while he has collected three All-Pac-12 honors to this point, including a pair of first team honors.
A staple at the top of the Stanford lineup, Geller enters this week's Pac-12 Championships with 57 career singles wins, including 44 in dual action. The latter total is tied for 33rd most in program history.
The Buenos Aires, Argentina native helped lead Stanford to its first Pac-12 title since 2015 a year ago, and the school's first outright triumph since 2003. Geller graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics, and is in the process of earning his Master's in management science and engineering.
In order to be eligible for the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, student-athletes must be a senior, on track to receive a degree, have a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 or higher, participate in at least 50 percent of the scheduled contests in the sport and have a minimum one year in residence at the institution.