Florida Southern's Zampese Selected as SSC Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year
12x NCAA All-American, 3x Academic All-American
Phil Wood | Sunshine State Conference
MELBOURNE, Fla. – Florida Southern College swimmer Matteo Zampese has been selected as the Sunshine State Conference's Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year. The twelve-time NCAA All-American majoring in Graphic Design has an undergraduate GPA of 4.0.
Voting for the award is conducted among Athletic Directors, Senior Woman Administrators, Athletic Communication Directors, and Faculty Athletic Representatives from the 11 SSC member institutions.
Zampese, a native of Bologna, Italy, has compiled an impressive list of both academic and athletic awards throughout his career. This season, he was named the CSC Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for Division II Men's Swimming, in addition to being named First Team Academic All-America by the same organization. In 2021-22, he was named First Team Scholar All-America by CSCAA and First Team Academic All-America by CoSIDA. He is a two-time recipient of the SSC Commissioner's Honor Roll, and he was named Florida Southern's 2022-23 Pat McFadden Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
In the pool, Zampese is a twelve-time NCAA All-American. At the 2022-23 NCAA Championships, he finished as the national runner-up in the 200-IM and the 100-breast. He earned All-SSC First Team honors in 2021-22 and 2022-23, and he set the SSC records in the 200-IM and 200-medley relay. In his career, he won four SSC titles, including the 200-IM in both 2022 and 2023. He holds school records in the 100-free (43.18), the 200-IM (1:45.06), the 200-free relay (1:18.55), the 200-medley relay (1:25.83), the 400-free relay (2:55.01), and the 400-medley relay (3:09.24).
Outside of the pool and the classroom, Zampese helped the swimming team perform community service at the Talbert House where he painted needed areas. He also won a FSC School of Business wall art competition, where he created a 6 foot x 20 foot mural at the Barnett Center of Free Enterprise.
Zampese is the fifth Florida Southern student-athlete to win SSC Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year since the award's inception in 1995-96. He joins Shanaka Weerasooriya (1995-96), Ryan Dunne (2002-03), Robbie Swan (2013-14), and Diego Gimenez (2015-16) as the Mocs to win the honor. He is the fifth swimmer to win the award, joining Brett Saunders (Tampa), Thomas Steenberg (Florida Tech), and the aforementioned Gimenez and Swan of Florida Southern.
Complete Listing: SSC Scholar-Athletes of the Year