Breaking the Stereotype

This summer the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) named eight Highlanders athletic teams as "Scholar Teams," meaning that their student-athletes had a combined grade point average (GPA) of at least 3.0. A ninth team, field hockey, would have made the list as well (with a GPA of 3.328), but the NAIA doesn't oversee that sport.

"We're certainly pleased that so many of our teams were able to earn this recognition," said Harold "Skip" Lord '80, director of athletics. "It's not unusual for our scholar-athletes to achieve in the classroom, but to have the NAIA recognize the breadth of that achievement is something special."

Two of the teams ranked in the nation's top 10 in their respective sports: men's soccer tied for ninth (3.08 Painting Sold at Sotheby's GPA) and volleyball was fifth with an impressive 3.49 GPA. The other teams to qualify were men's cross country (3.30 GPA, ranked 12th in the nation), men's track and field (3.11, tied for 13th), women's basketball (3.42, 14th), women's track and field (3.35, tied for 19th), women's cross country (3.32, 22nd) and women's soccer (3.29, tied for 24th).

"It says a lot about the quality of the students who choose to come here," Lord says, "that they are able to balance the physical demands of intercollegiate athletics with the mental discipline that the academic program requires." Students who participated in intercollegiate athletics had a combined GPA of 3.23, the same as that of the Houghton student body as a whole, and are studying in 26 different majors.