August 28, 2024
For the fourth time in the last five years, St. Mary’s University has claimed one of the two Lone Star Conference Academic Excellence Awards presented by Balfour.
The Lone Star Conference announced on Tuesday, Aug. 27, that the Rattlers have won the men’s honor for the third straight year after winning the women’s award in 2020 for the athletic department with the highest GPA for the 2023-2024 academic year. Texas Woman’s won the women’s honor for the second straight season.
“I am really proud of both our men’s and women’s teams for their outstanding work in the classroom,” Executive Director of Athletics Robert Coleman said. “One of the things I am most proud about with our Athletics program is we do both the academic and athletic piece really well. We provide a very strong liberal arts education and prepare our student-athletes for life after sports.”
The award winners were determined by a point system, with points distributed according to finish in sports sponsored by the LSC sport after a conference-wide comparison of team GPAs. The member institution with the highest team GPA in each sport was named the Sport Academic Champion and earned five points toward the overall award. The runner-up in each sport picked up four points, and the third-place three points toward the overall award. Any program with a Team GPA of 2.00 and above earned one point. Points for each member institution were totaled by gender and then divided by that institution’s number of counter programs in that gender to arrive at the comparison value.
“When you win an award once, it shows you had a nice season,” Coleman said. “But when you do it four times in five years, either the men or women, it shows excellence, which we strive for every day. I appreciate the great work of our coaching staff in recruiting such talented student-athletes. We have now had twelve straight semesters that our entire athletics program has averaged a 3.3 GPA or higher, and I couldn’t be prouder.”
The Rattlers Baseball team had the highest GPA among the Lone Star baseball clubs with a 3.458. The team with the overall highest GPA in the conference was the West Texas A&M Women’s Golf team. The Lady Buffs posted a 3.914 GPA, narrowly edging out the Rattler Women’s Golf team, which had a 3.817.