The Black and Gold athletic department received one of the Peach Belt Conference’s top academic honors June 2, as the Braves were awarded the conference’s Presidents’ Academic Award.
The award was the first time UNCP was given the honor and was given out to UNCP at the league’s annual meeting in Hilton Head, S.C.
The award recognizes academic excellence throughout all UNCP athletics and their student-athletes.
“The Peach Belt Conference Presidents’ Academic Cup Award is a direct result of the emphasis that our UNCP coaches put on academic excellence,” athletic director Dan Kenney said. “UNCP student athletes had a 2.82 GPA with five of the 16 UNCP teams posting over a 3.00 GPA.”
The conference asked for the league’s 13 members to submit an average grade point average for all of their undergraduate student body at UNCP this spring. The conference then compared this GPA to the school’s student-athletes’ GPAs.
These two numbers were then used to create a ratio to identify the top academic performing schools in the conference. UNCP had the highest ratio of regular students to student-athletes at 1.106 to win the award.
Overall 11 of the conference’s institutions had their student-athletes have a better GPA than the general student body.
The award is part of a larger conference program to highlight the accomplishments of PBC student athletes in the classroom as well as on the field. This year marks the fifth year the award has been presented.
The conference also selects the top student-athletes in each sport for all-academic teams following each sport’s season.
