Volleyball Squad Earns AVCA Team Academic Award for 2014-15
LEXINGTON, Ky. --- The American Volleyball Coaches Association released a record 752 college, including Moravian College, and high school volleyball teams that have earned the 2014-15 AVCA Team Academic Award.
LEXINGTON, Ky. --- The American Volleyball Coaches Association released a record 752 college, including Moravian College, and high school volleyball teams that have earned the 2014-15 AVCA Team Academic Award.
The award, which began in 1992-93, honors college and high school teams that displayed excellence in the classroom by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average during the 2014-15 school year and passed last year's mark of 687 schools honored in 2013-14. Nominating coaches must be AVCA members.
The AVCA Team Academic Award has become one of the AVCA's fastest growing awards programs, seeing an impressive surge in teams honored over the past several years. Since the 2000-2001 season, the number of recipients have increased every single year but one, while amassing a 476 team increase over the span of the last decade. Since the award's inception in 1993, the amount of award winners has increased from 62 to its current number of 752.
Girls high school led the way with the number of recipients with 237. NCAA Division I recorded their highest-ever total number of recipients, honoring 146 programs while NCAA Division II also set a new record by reaching a total of 113 honorees. NCAA Division III continues to set new records after 140 schools take home the honor with the Two-Year College category also surpassing their previous high of 22 with 24. The high school boys notched a record in their category with 29.
Over 1,000 different schools have earned the award in the program's 23-year history, with exactly 6,878 awards been given out in total.
Moravian, under the direction of 23-year head coach Shelley Bauder, earned the AVCA Team Academic Award for the ninth time since the award was started. The Greyhounds and fellow Landmark Conference schools Juniata College, Susquehanna University and The University of Scranton received the honor.
"Our goal each season is to earn the AVCA Team Academic award," Bauder said. "We talk about the award throughout the season and the discipline it takes to balance both the academic and athletic side of the Greyhound student athlete. It's a great sense of accomplishment once the spring grades are tallied and I'm very proud of our team for earning this award again."
Coach Bauder and the Greyhounds will begin their 2015 season on Tuesday, September 1 when the squad hosts DeSales University in Johnston Hall in a 7:00 p.m. non-conference match.
To view the entire 2014-15 AVCA Team Academic Award recipients, visit http://www.avca.org/awards/team-academic-award/14-15-recipients/.
Parts of release from AVCA.
