Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted from an article at www.montclair.edu/Athletics.

Jackie Ferranti of Bergenfield has been named the New Jersey Athletic Conference Female Athlete of the Year.

The Montclair State University senior was honored at the league’s annual brunch at the Princeton Hyatt.

She is the seventh Montclair State athlete to earn one of the conference’s highest honors and the first female to be selected since Tara Wisz in 1999.

Ferranti, a First-Team NFCA All-America, completed one of the best all-round seasons for a Montclair State player in recent memory, helping the Red Hawks to win the 2008 NJAC regular-season and tournament championships while setting a school record for win as MSU posted a 43-6 mark.

Named the NJAC Co-Player of the Year and First-Team All-Conference pick (her fourth), she batted .431 this season with 66 hits, 60 runs scored (single-season record), 16 doubles, four triples, eight home runs and 38 RBI and posting slugging and on-base percentages of .745 and .542, respectively. In addition, she stole 11 bases and successfully handled 126 or 128 chances in the field.

She led the NJAC in eight categories, including batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, runs scored, hits, home runs, total bases and walks while finishing second in RBI.

She is the first player in Montclair State softball history to collect 200 hits, 20 home runs and 100 RBI, and she ranks second all-time in MSU history in games (178), walks (94), third in runs (154) and home runs (20), fourth –in on-base percentage (.454), fifth in total bases (312) and sixth in RBI (123).

The Carol Blazejowski Outstanding Female Athlete of the Year honoree at MSU, Ferranti also became jus the fifth athlete and first female in MSU history to be named Academic All-America, as she was chosen Third Team to ESPN The Magazine Softball Team. She was a District 2 First-Team selection by the organization.

Ferranti, the 2007 Scholar-Athlete Award winner at MSU, is a four-time dean’s list student and played the 2008 campaign as a graduate student after earning her degree in physical education and health in January. She completed the five-year program in three-and-a-half years and is also a member of the National Student-Athlete Academic Achievement Award for the highest team cumulative grade-point average three times.