14 Athletes and Seven XC Teams Earn USTFCCCA All-Academic Honors
USTFCCCA Team Awards | USTFCCCA Individual Awards
The United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) released its all-academic teams for the cross country season and five Empire 8 women's programs and two men's programs, along with 14 individuals met the qualifying criteria.
According to the USTFCCCA release, "In order for a team to be deemed the Scholar Team of the Year, it must meet two criteria — finish highly at NCAAs (top-10 or better) and have a cumulative GPA of 3.1 or better. Overall, there were 207 women's teams that finished the semester with GPAs of 3.1 or better. For the men, there were 151 teams with GPAs of 3.1 or better."
Ithaca's men's team earned the highest GPA in all of Division III at 3.697, edging out MIT (3.67) and Principia (3.67). The Bombers also held the nation's highest GPA back in 2014.
Stevens Institute of Technology was also honored on the men's side with a 3.539 GPA.
The Ithaca women posted a team GPA of 3.684, which ranked the highest within the E8 women's teams. Joining Ithaca with the team honor is Stevens (3.589), Nazareth College (3.42), St. John Fisher College (3.29) and Utica College (3.25).
Individually six men and eight women met the requirement to land on the USTFCCCA All-Academic team.
"To earn that distinction, student-athletes must have a cumulative GPA of 3.30 or higher and finish in the top 25 percent at their respective regional."
Representing the men were Ithaca seniors Stephen Gomez and Sawyer Hitchcock, juniors Sean Phillips and Jesse Capellaro and sophomore Tim Chappell and Utica freshman Tyler Wright.
The student-athletes on the women's teams that earned all-academic distinction included Ithaca seniors Michaela Cioffredi and Anna Fay, sophomores Taryn Cordani and Denise Ibarra and freshman Emilie Mertz. Nazareth had two representatives in seniors Gabrielle LeBihan and Robin Wagner and freshman Mary Visca was honored from Stevens.