Grizzlies receive NCAA Festival Academic Award

ASC women have impressive 3.758 team GPA

LOUISVILLE, Ky.- In addition to their third place trophy, the Adams State College women's cross country team brought home some additional hardware from their recent trip to the NCAA Division II Fall Sports Festival, held earlier this month.

The Grizzly women were recognized at the festival's closing ceremonies held at historic Churchill Downs, site of the annual Kentucky Derby for having the best team GPA of any of the 24 women's cross country teams at the championships.  Similar awards were handed out for all six sports that held their national championship events in the city over a 3-day period from Dec. 2-4.

The 7-woman Grizzly contingent had an impressive average GPA of 3.758.  Team members include seniors Kristen McGlynn (Bailey, Colo.), Cassie Mitchell (Tustin, Calif.), Addison LeMaster (Tulia, Texas) and Ashley Quintana (Pecos, N.M.), sophomores Alicia Nelson (Craig, Colo.) and Sarah Lange (Brattleboro, Vt.) and freshman Kelly Lamb (Creede, Colo.).

Five of those women have cumulative GPA's of 3.9 or higher at ASC, including McGlynn, who sports a perfect 4.0 GPA while majoring in English with an emphasis in creative writing.

The award is the first of several academic type awards that the runners are likely to receive as individuals and as a team in the coming weeks as the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference's All-Academic Teams are scheduled to be announced next week after a vote of the conference's sports information directors, who will select first team, second team and honor roll squads.  LeMaster, McGlynn, Mitchell and Nelson along with sophomore Lindsay Grasmick (Fowler, Colo.), who was not on the Grizzlies' 7-person team at the national championships, have all been nominated for those awards that require a student-athlete to have a 3.3 cumulative GPA and to be at the institution for at least one full academic year.

Additionally, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association will announce its' annual NCAA Division II All-Academic Teams in the early months of 2011.  The USTFCCCA's team award requires a team to have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher after the fall semester, which will conclude at ASC later this week.  The USTFCCCA's individual award will go to all individuals with a cumulative GPA of 3.25 or higher who placed in the top 30 percent of the team's respective regional championship meet or in the top 50 percent of the national championship field.

The Grizzlies had five such individual honorees in 2009, a group that included LeMaster, McGlynn and Nelson, and were named as the USTFCCCA's Scholar Team of the Year for the third straight season.

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