NYU-Polytechnic President Jerry Hultin honors MVP & Cricket team

ACC President Lloyd Jodah,Adrian Gordon (with Rajasthan Royals uniform), Bruce Niswander & NYU-Poly President Jerry Hultin

NEW YORK, – American College Cricket (ACC) President Lloyd Jodah presented Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) star cricket player Adrian Gordon with the uniform of one of the world’s most prestigious professional teams,the Rajasthan Royals – the team with which he will practice as a winner of ACC’s Most Valuable Player award.

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In a ceremony on the school’s Brooklyn campus, Jodah, NYU-Poly President Jerry M. Hultin, Athletic Director Maureen Braziel, Associate Dean of Student Affairs Cheryl McNear and ACC CEO Nino DiLoreto honored Gordon and the NYU-Poly Cricket Club .

Seventeen-year-old Azrab Cheema, a freshman majoring in business and technology management, was also recognized as the ACC’s Emerging Player. Cheema graduated from Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies in Brooklyn.
NYU-Poly President Hultin, who recently returned from a visit to India, introduced Jodah as a man who brought his “years of Wall St experience, and a vision to bring Cricket back into the American mainstream” to founding American College Cricket.

“At NYU-Poly, we challenge our students from across the world to lead new paths, and this is what you did here,” Hultin said to the Cricket Club members. “You expanded opportunities for your fellow students, you collaborated in the same way that you do in your academics – to improve lives – and I applaud you for that.”

U.S. News and World Report ranks NYU-Poly as fifth in the nation in campus diversity.
Gordon earned his ACC Spring Break Championship Award,sponsored by Big League USA, in large part for scoring a phenomenal 145* runs in a single match and two half centuries in other matches in the national tournament this month in Florida. Despite an injured foot he also bowled well and took 4 wickets. He and another MVP, Adil Bhatti of Montgomery College, will travel this month to India to be guests of the Indian Premier League’s Rajasthan Royals.

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Gordon, a pre-med (biomolecular science) senior who will graduate this spring, lives in Rosedale, Long Island. He started playing cricket as a toddler in Antigua, and first played competitively at age 9. He represented Antigua at the Under 13, 15 and Under 19 levels. He began his undergraduate studies in Florida and caught the eye of Jodah when he was playing on a Queens field. Jodah encouraged him to form a cricket club at NYU-Poly, and in 2009 Gordon helped found the club, recruited fellow students and acted as de facto coach.

A strong, fast bowler, Gordon was selected last year to represent the United States in Bermuda at the 2010 ICC Americas Regional Division 1 Championships. At this year’s American College Cricket pring Break Championship, he demonstrated remarkable batting skills – a highly unusual and prized combination in the sport.

In addition to the opportunity arranged by Big League USA to be a guest of the Rajasthan Royals, Gordon has also been invited to England next month to practice with the renowned Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club.
Bruce Niswander, the Cricket Club’s faculty advisor and director of NYU-Poly’s business incubators and technology transfer, told the students: “You serve as invaluable missionaries to the United States and the rest of the world in the way you have worked together. Do not forget that as you graduate; continue what you have learned.”

About Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly Polytechnic University), an affiliate of New York University, is a comprehensive school of engineering, applied sciences, technology and research, and is rooted in a 157-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. The institution, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second-oldest private engineering school. In addition to its main campus in New York City at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, it also offers programs at sites throughout the region and around the globe. Globally, NYU-Poly has programs in Israel, China and is an integral part of NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi. For more information, visit www.poly.edu.