ST. GEORGE — Dixie State University’s women’s volleyball team has earned the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s Team Academic Award for the 2018-19 season.
The AVCA Team Academic Award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that display 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.
According to a news release issued by AVCA earlier this week, DSU is one of nine Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference programs presented with the annual award. More than 140 teams at the NCAA Division II level and 1,126 total programs nationwide at all levels collected AVCA honors, the release stated.
As a team, the Trailblazers combined to post a 3.4204 cumulative team grade point average this past academic year, which was the fourth-highest team GPA among DSU’s 15 intercollegiate athletic programs.
DSU’s volleyball program also placed eight players on the RMAC’s academic honor roll, with senior Malary Marshall (3.985 GPA) earning the conference’s Volleyball Summit Award and CoSIDA-Google Academic All-District 6 recognition.
In addition, seven more Trailblazers were named to the conference’s honor roll: senior Hannah Doonan (3.416 GPA), junior Lauren Gammell (3.437 GPA), sophomore Sydney Johnson (3.904 GPA), junior Kara Moore (3.355 GPA), sophomore Jordyn Nelson (3.745 GPA), junior Amanda Robinson (3.954 GPA) and freshman Abbey Smith (3.877 GPA).
The AVCA Team Academic Award is the single largest award offered in terms of the total number of schools, players and coaches honored. Since the 2000-01 season, the number of recipients has increased every year but two, while more than doubling the total over the last eight academic years.
Since the award’s inception in 1993, the amount of award winners has increased from 62 to its current number of 1,126, the news release stated.
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