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NAIA Recognizes Eight Highlander Teams as Academic All-Americans
HOUGHTON,
N.Y. —Being named an Academic All-American is an impressive
achievement; it’s not easy to excel at academics and play a college
varsity sport at the same time.
It’s even more impressive when an entire team achieves Scholar Team status from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) by having the combined grade point averages (GPA) of its athletes exceed 3.0 (out of 4).
So when the NAIA named eight Houghton College squads to its Scholar Team list for 2006-2007 it turned some heads.
“We’re certainly pleased that so many of our teams were able to earn this recognition,” said Harold “Skip” Lord, director of athletics at the Christian liberal arts college in the Southern Tier. “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.”
It certainly is: fewer than a dozen of the nearly 300 schools in the NAIA had more teams qualify for the honor than Houghton did—and every one of them fielded teams in more sports (at least 11, and as many as 23).
Houghton has just 10 varsity teams, only nine of which were eligible for the honor because they compete in the NAIA. The 10th team, field hockey, would have made the list as well with a combined GPA of 3.328, but the NAIA doesn’t oversee that sport.
These teams didn’t just squeak in, either; two of them ranked in the nation’s top 10 in their respective sports: men’s soccer tied for ninth (3.08 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).
"Houghton has long had a reputation as a college with a high academic standard, "Lord said, "so it’s not surprising that our athletes achieve in the classroom as well as in the arena."
The numbers bear him out. According to Houghton’s academic records office, the combined GPA of the student body is an impressive 3.23, and so is the GPA for those who compete in intercollegiate athletics. The athletes mix in well with the student body in another way as well: their academic interests are diversified. In fact, the 2006-2007 athletes that the NAIA honored are studying in 26 different majors. “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.”
