Rice Athletics earns C-USA Institutional Excellence Award for fourth straight year
Football, swimming and women’s tennis post league’s top GPA

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Rice University has earned the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the fourth straight year, league Commissioner Britton Banowsky announced July 23.

	RICEOWLS.COM

The Institutional Excellence Award is given to the C-USA institution with the highest grade point average during the current academic year for all student-athletes in conference-sponsored sports. Rice student-athletes combined for an annual GPA of 3.099, which is the highest in the Owls’ current four-year run. The Owls have won the C-USA Institutional Excellence Award every year since joining the conference.

The Rice football, women’s swimming and women’s tennis teams all won the C-USA Sport Academic Award for having the highest team GPA in the league for the current academic year. The Rice women’s tennis team posted the highest annual GPA of any other sport at 3.748. The Owl swimmers had the highest team GPA (3.531) of any other Division I swim program in the nation (for women’s and men’s programs). Not only did Rice football record the league’s best team GPA (2.843), the Owls won 10 games, including a postseason victory in the Texas Bowl.

A total of eight teams were repeat winners from a season ago. The following is a list of all the 2008-09 Sports Academic Award honorees:

Sport, Recipient, GPA
Baseball, UCF, 3.174
Men’s basketball, Tulane, 2.745
Women’s basketball, UTEP, 2.913
Men’s cross country, Tulsa, 3.411
Women’s cross country, Tulsa, 3.660
Football, Rice, 2.843
Men’s golf, East Carolina, 3.590
Women’s soccer, Memphis, 3.573
Women’s swimming, Rice, 3.531
Men’s tennis, Southern Miss, 3.550
Women’s tennis, Rice, 3.748
Men’s track and field, Tulane, 3.254
Women’s track and field, Tulsa, 3.409
Volleyball, Memphis, 3.558
Women’s golf, Marshall, 3.520
Men’s soccer, *South Carolina, 3.233
Softball, East Carolina, 3.306

*C-USA affiliate member for men’s soccer