Volleyball Wins AVCA Honor
August 1, 2008
LEXINGTON, Ky – Southwestern Oklahoma State University’s volleyball team measures among the brightest and smartest as the group joined two other Lone Star Conference schools to be recognized by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) as a Team Academic Award winner.
SWOSU, along with Texas Woman’s and Eastern New Mexico, were among 353 volleyball teams across the nation to earn the AVCA recognition.
The award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that displayed 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.
"This result is just phenomenal!" said AVCA Executive Director Kathy DeBoer. "Look at this in context: We have coaches representing about 3,000 different academic institutions. Of that total, 353, or nearly 12%, coach teams with a grade point average of 3.3 or better! How can you not be proud of that?"
SWOSU coach Bo Pagliasotti, who is in his fourth year at the SWOSU helm, was pleased to learn of his team’s award and is eager to repeat year after year.
“We recruit student-athletes with the dual purpose of excelling at volleyball in the classroom,” Pagliasotti said. “We have had a number of players honored for their academic work both at the conference, regional and national level. This AVCA award is about the whole team. We can all share in it.”
NCAA Division I broke its own record for number of collegiate schools at any division receiving the award, as 70 of those institutions were honored this year, surpassing the mark of 56 set a year ago. NCAA Division III also surpassed the previous collegiate record, as well as its own division-high, as 62 of those schools attained the mark.
In total, 212 collegiate programs met the requirements for the award in 2007-08. In addition to the NCAA Division I & Division III recipients, a total of 39 NCAA Division II schools bested its previous high mark of 31.
The NAIA had 22 of its member schools achieve the honor this year, its third-highest total in the award’s history. Fifteen (15) schools in the two-year college category attained the mark, the highest ever in that division, while the NCCAA produced two recipients.
The NCAA men’s programs produced multiple recipients of the award for only the second time, as three institutions earned the award for the second consecutive year. A total of 141 high school boys’ and girls’ programs – 13 boys’ teams and 128 girls’ teams – earned the award in 2007-08.
Over 900 different schools have earned the award in the program’s 16-year history, and over 2,800 awards have been given out. Only two institutions, both high schools, have earned the distinction all 16 years: Jonesboro High School (Jonesboro, Arkansas) and Ross S. Sterling High School (Baytown, Texas).