MELBOURNE, Fla. – Senior Alvaro Diaz Rodrigo earned one of the highest honors awarded by the Sunshine State Conference as he was announced as the 2024-25 SSC Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year on Wednesday. Diaz Rodrigo, a senior on the men's tennis team, is the Eagles' third male honoree following former teammate Juan Ortiz Couder (2020-21) and Elijah Jenkins (2021-22).
 
The Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards are voted on by Athletic Directors, Senior Woman Administrators, Athletic Communication Directors, and Faculty Athletic Representatives from each of the 11 SSC member institutions. Diaz Rodrigo the seventh men's tennis athlete to win the award since it was established in 1995-96.
 
Diaz Rodrigo completed his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering with a 3.8 grade point average and has a 4.0 in pursuit of his master's in the same discipline. The Madrid, Spain native earned numerous academic accolades throughout his career wearing the Blue & Gold. He is a four-time Sunshine State Conference Commissioner's Honor Roll awardee, a two-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-District selection and has won the ITA Scholar-Athlete and D2 ADA Academic Achievement awards three times each.
 
His performance in the classroom also afforded Diaz Rodrigo numerous scholarship opportunities, including the Eagles of Excellence Scholarship, the ERAU Wallenborn Scholarship, the Embry-Riddle Student Athlete Transformational Scholarship and the Jim Henderson Scholarship. He was also a two-time recipient of the Rudy Knabe Endowed Scholarship named for the first head coach in program history and served as the men's tennis representative on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee for two years.
 
Diaz Rodrigo was a staple in the men's tennis lineup throughout his four-year career compiling a 82-33 record in singles and a 76-37 record in doubles. He was named to the All-Conference team three times earning Second Team honors in singles in 2025, First Team honors in singles in 2024 and Honorable Mention recognition in doubles in 2021.
 
While Diaz Rodrigo excelled both athletically and academically, his service to the community makes him the epitome of Embry-Riddle's "Student, Person, Player" mantra. He was a MATLAB assistant and an Astrodynamics and Spacecraft Lab Researcher, and designed, manufactured, and tested a 5-DOF robot used to verify guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for spacecraft relative motion. He volunteered at the Great Kids Learning Center, Mutt Strut, Our Lady of Hope Food Distribution helped coordinate campus and community clean-up events and spearheaded the men's tennis team's contributions to the Volusia Thanksgiving Basket Brigade.