Tampa Earns AVCA Team Academic Award
July 22, 2010LEXINGTON, Ky. – The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) has announced its 2009-10 Team Academic Award recipients, honoring The University of Tampa as one of the schools meeting its criteria for the recognition.
UT was one of the 450 teams that earned the AVCA Team Academic Award for the 2009-10 season. This number once again smashes the previous years' total of 409 and sets a new all-time high for this award.
The award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that displayed excellence in the classroom during the school year by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.
"There is no better way to gauge the success of a sport than to track the accomplishments of the people who participate," said AVCA Executive Director Kathy DeBoer. "Each of these 450 teams represents 12-15 really smart kids. What a great day for the sport of volleyball!"
The 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. The program has increased by over 300% in the last 10 years and by 79% in the past three years alone.
Both NCAA Division I and NCAA Division II recorded their highest-ever total numbers of recipients, with the former honoring 94 programs and the latter honoring 55 programs. The high school division also set a new bar with its 179 honorees.
