NJCAA Honors OCCAC Student-Athletes With Academic Awards

By Nicholas Huenefeld/OCCAC Sports Information

Colorado Springs, Colo.---The National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) has named 18 student-athletes from the OCCAC as NJCAA Academic Student-Athlete Award winners and honored several teams for their overall academic achievement.

With three different levels of individual academic achievement, the NJCAA awards the Pinnacle Award for Academic Excellence to students with a 4.00 GPA. Superior Academic Achievement honors go to students with a 3.80-3.99 GPA and Exemplary Academic Achievement honors go to students with a 3.60-3.79 GPA.

Individual Awards

In the OCCAC, five colleges had student-athletes earn academic honors, led by Cincinnati State with six. Among those five colleges, 18 student-athletes earned at least a 3.60 GPA with at least three full-time semesters.

Lisa Urbanski (women's volleyball) of Owens Community College, Dylan Danko (baseball) of Cuyahoga Community College and Allison Hainer (cross country/track and field) of Cuyahoga Community College all earned 4.0 GPAs among those 18 student-athletes to earn Pinnacle Awards of Academic Excellence.

Among those earning Superior Academic Achievement honors were: Austin Klueh (men's soccer) of Cincinnati State, Jahad Fruits (men's basketball) of Cuyahoga Community College, Nicholas Hoy (baseball) of Cuyahoga Community College, Alikhan Tulebayev (men's basketball) of Lorain County Community College and Jessica Thobe (women's volleyball) of Sinclair Community College.

Exemplary Academic Achievement honors went to Michael Anthony (men's soccer) of Cincinnati State, Tucker Beerman (men's soccer) of Cincinnati State, Liam Doyle (men's soccer) of Cincinnati State, Richard Dumont (men's golf) of Cincinnati State, Danielle Reifenberger (women's soccer) of Cincinnati State, Richard VanHorne (men's soccer) of Cuyahoga Community College, Hannah Pinkie (women's volleyball) of Lorain County Community College, Mark Carpenter (baseball) of Sinclair Community College, Nick Street (baseball) of Owens Community College and Dominique Yates (women's volleyball) of Owens Community College.

Team Awards

In addition to individual student-athletes earning awards, several OCCAC teams were honored for their overall team GPAs and awarded with NJCAA All-Academic Team honors. Those teams with 3.0 team GPAs or above were: the men's golf team at Cincinnati State (3.27 GPA), the Owens Community College softball team (3.09 GPA), Sinclair Community College's women's volleyball team (3.26 GPA) and Owens Community College's women's volleyball team (3.19 GPA).

Notes

All four teams that achieved at least a 3.0 GPA did so for the second straight year, while Jessica Thobe of Sinclair Community College became a back-to-back NJCAA individual academic award winner.

During the 2013-14 academic year, the NJCAA saw 58,446 student-athletes compete on 3,705 teams in 28 different sports. Of those competitors, 3.08 percent – or 1,799 student-athletes – were recognized with academic awards for their achievements in the classroom. Receiving the highest honors with a 4.0 grade-point average, 171 student-athletes received the NJCAA Pinnacle Award for Academic Excellence.

With minimal changes to its award program’s inception in 1983, the NJCAA has been annually recognizing the academic success of its student-athletes for 31 years.