Last week, the Wildcats’ league for most sports, the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, honored a trio of these athletes with its GLIAC Commissioners’ Award for the winter season.

The conference honors a dozen student-athletes — six men and six women — each season across all of its sports.

Of that number, this was just the second time that NMU had three honorees in the same season, the other time coming in the previous winter season of 2024-25.

The current student-athletes honored with the award are men’s basketball graduate student Dylan Kuehl, women’s swimming and diving junior Kalina Ceglinski and men’s swimming and diving senior Leo Nolles.

Northern Michigan University’s Dylan Kuehl, second from left, talks with teammates, from left, Isaiah Allen, Trevor Polite and Jackson Dudek in a timeout during the GLIAC Tournament championship game played against Grand Valley State at Vandament Arena in Marquette on March 8. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

The previous winter’s honorees all came from Northern’s swimmers and divers, Nolles, Camilla Carbone and Mia Strazny.

In the fall, Northern also had a GLIAC Commissioner’s Award honoree, senior men’s soccer captain Alessandro Scialanga. 

Dylan Kuehl

Kuehl is just the second NMU men’s basketball player to earn the Commissioner’s Award, which the GLIAC cites are granted to juniors, seniors and graduate students who excel in both the classroom and in competition.

The first NMU men’s hoops player to earn the award was Tyler Kazmierkoski, coming as the first Wildcats honoree ever for this award in the winter of 2007-08.

Northern Michigan University’s men swimmer Leo Nolles, left, and women’s diver Kalina Ceglinski were among the three Wildcats honored with GLIAC Commissioner’s Awards for the winter semester. (Photo illustration courtesy NMU)

Kuehl, a native of Iron Ridge, Wisconsin, has a 3.65 grade-point average in construction management and recently earned First Team Academic All-American honors from the College Sports Communicators, pairing that with a performance-based First Team All-America award from the Division II Conference Commissioners Association.

He earned that latter distinction with his play, also earning Midwest Region Player of the Year and sweeping GLIAC Player of the Year and GLIAC Defensive Player of the Year laurels.

Kuehl averaged 21.3 points a game in all contests, and 23.8 ppg in league games, to win both those scoring titles. He also led the league by shooting 55.2% from the field, was fourth with 1.2 blocked shots each outing, tied for fifth with 3.1 assists a game and ninth in rebounding at 6.4 per contest.

And he led the Wildcats to a program record in wins with their 28-7 record, winning a conference title — either a regular-season or tournament crown — in each of the past four years.

This year, Northern went 16-4 to share the regular-season title and gain the No. 1 seed in the GLIAC Tournament, then advancing to the NCAA Division II tourney and winning a game there.

Kuehl finished No. 2 on the NMU all-time scoring list with 2,197 points.

Kalina Ceglinski

Ceglinski, from Elmhurst, Illinois, was not only the Wildcat women’s best diver, but one of the best in the nation after she earned All-American honors on the one-meter and three-meter boards at the NCAA Division II Championships while earlier being named GLIAC Female Diver of the Year with a first-place gold medal at the GLIAC Championships.

She was ranked No. 1 nationally in the one-meter and No. 5 in the three-meter, according to prodivingcoach.org, according to a NMU Sports Information news release announcing the swimmer and diver honors.

Ceglinski was also honored with a CSC Academic All-District honor, advancing to consideration for Academic All-America status, too, after posting a 3.96 GPA in sports science.

“Congratulations to Leo Nolles and Kalina Ceglinski for their GLIAC awards,” NMU swimming and diving head coach Heidi Voigt said in an NMU Sports Information news release about these awards. “Both are very deserving and have meant so much to our team.

“Leo has been a Wildcat through and through his whole career, bringing motivation and competitive drive to his team. He truly lives and breathes swimming, not only dedication to improving himself but also his teammates.”

Leo Nolles

Nolles, of Maldonado, Uruguay, earned his second straight Commissioner’s Award as a seven-time All-American at the NCAA Division II Championships.

Also representing his South American country at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, he won gold medals and five medals in all at this winter’s GLIAC Championships and was recently honored with a GLIAC Pat Reipma Postgraduate Scholarship, given to one man and one woman with a $5,000 stipend to attend his or her choice of graduate school.

He was also selected as a CSC Academic All-District recipient, advancing to the All-America phase of that award for the third consecutive year after compiling a 3.74 GPA in athletic coaching.

Story contents based on Northern Michigan University Sports Information press releases reviewing the honors. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.