Moon Township, Pa. – True freshman midfielder Eric Rankel (Philadelphia, Pa. / Downingtown West) of the Robert Morris University men's lacrosse team continued his unprecedented run as he earned a fourth-consecutive Northeast Conference (NEC) Rookie of the Week honor as announced by the league office Monday.

In doing so, Rankel becomes the first student-athlete in NEC history to win Rookie of the Week in four consecutive weeks.

RMU has now combined to take home six of the first 12 weekly honors from the conference this season.

Rankel continued the strong start to his initial campaign this past Saturday at Dartmouth as he added another hat trick to his young collegiate career. It was Rankel's second hat trick of the season and his third multi-goal effort thus far. Rankel has now also tallied multiple points in each of RMU's five games thus far.

Rankel currently sits second overall in the league in goals per game, averaging 2.4 scores per contest. Perhaps even more impressively, he ranks fourth nationally in goals per game by freshmen. He is also tied for third nationally in points per game by freshmen, averaging 3.4 per contest. Rankel also sits fourth nationally in shooting percentage amongst all freshmen, scoring on more than 44 percent of his shots.

Rankel becomes the fourth Colonial in program history to win four weekly awards of any type during the course of a career and just the second Colonial to win four weekly awards in a single season.

Robert Morris will look to get back on track with a mid-week matchup Tuesday, March 12, but the Colonials will attempt to do so a good deal from home. RMU will play at Jacksonville with the faceoff set for 2:00 p.m.