D3Soccer Names Ikeda All-American, Midfielder of the Year

2/15/2019 2:15:00 PM

By: Scott Sabocheck, Asst. Director of Athletic Communications

The awards continue to keep piling in for University of Rochester senior men's soccer player Bryce Ikeda.

On Friday, Ikeda was named a D3soccer.com 1st Team All-American and was selected as the Division III Midfielder of the Year.

He becomes the second Yellowjacket to earn All-American honors from D3soccer.com, joining Keith Grafmeyer '15, who was a 2nd Team selection in 2013.

Ikeda has earned a slew of honors for his work both on and off the pitch for the Yellowjackets during the 2018 campaign, one in which Rochester reached the Division III Final Four for the first time in program history.

The co-captain was named a 1st Team All-American by the United Soccer Coaches, just the 5th USC first-teamer in UR men's soccer history. He also earned 1st Team All-UAA, 1st Team All-Region awards for his play during the regular season. Following UR's postseason run, he also was selected to the Division III All-Tournament Team.

This season he led Rochester with seven goals and seven assists for a total of 21 points, all of which were career-highs for the senior. Additionally, he added four game-winning goals and started all 21 games, logging 1,579 minutes, fifth most on UR. Rochester ended with a 16-3-2 record in 2018, tying for the most wins in a single-season in the 85-year history of the program.

Off the field, Ikeda, an Electrical and Computer Engineering major, was just as accomplished. He was a USC Scholar All-American 2nd Team selection and was honored by CoSIDA as a 3rd Team Google Cloud Academic All-American. This comes in addition to his UAA All-Academic, Academic-All District and Scholar All-Region honors in the 2018 season.

Ikeda's leadership shined through over a year ago, with Rochester's historic campaign this year starting with an impassioned speech by Ikeda to teammates immediately following their 2017 Elite 8 loss to Messiah. He vowed that they would return to the Elite 8 the following season and come away with a different result, setting the tone for the hungry and hard-working Yellowjackets.