BRENTWOOD—A trio of Austin Peay State University athletic teams earned one 16 Ohio Valley Conference Team Academic Achievement Awards for their work in the classroom, the conference office announced Thursday. The Governors men and women's tennis programs and indoor volleyball program earned accolades.
The OVC Team Academic Achievement Awards which are presented annually in each Conference-sponsored sport to the member institution's team with the greatest percentage of its eligible student-athletes who achieved a 3.25 grade-point average or higher.
The three team honors tied Austin Peay with Jacksonville State, Morehead State and SIU Edwardsville for most in the conference. It's the first time since 2012-13 that multiple Austin Peay teams received Academic Achievement Awards from the league office and the school's most since the 2008-09 academic year produced six team winners and the OVC Institutional Academic Achievement Award.
The men and women's tennis programs have shown consistently high academic success since Ross Brown took over prior to the 2012-13 season; this is the second Team Academic Achievement Award for both programs under Brown's stewardship, including the second-straight for the women's program. The men's tennis program has now garnered five of these honors since the award's inception in 2004-05, tying the women's golf program for most by an Austin Peay squad.
It likewise marked the second Team Academic Achievement honor for the volleyball team during head coach Taylor Mott's tenure and the program's fourth overall.
Overall, these are the 22nd, 23rd and 24th honors earned by an Austin Peay athletics team since 2004-05. It caps a week that saw a program-record 123 student-athletes named to the Commissioner's Honor Roll and 24 Govs—also a program record—achieved perfect 4.0 GPA's to earn the OVC Academic Medal of Honor.
