Thursday, June 21, 2018

BEAVERTON, Ore. – Less than a week after being named the top male athlete in the GNAC, recent Western Oregon graduate David Ribich was named as the best small college athlete in Oregon as he won the Ad Rutschman Award at the Oregon Sports Awards.

The annual awards presentation took place on Wednesday, June 20, at the Tiger Woods Center on the Nike World Campus. Named for the longtime hall of fame Linfield head football coach, the award is presented to the top male and female non-Division I athlete in the state of Oregon as determined by a voting panel.

Ribich was named the GNAC Male Athlete of the Year for the second consecutive year and swept the conference’s cross country, indoor track and field and outdoor track and field Male Athlete of the Year awards during the course of the season. He was also selected as a Google Cloud/CoSIDA Division II First Team Academic All-American and recently signed a professional contract to run for Brooks.

Ribich won three national championships and was a five-time All-American while completing his communication studies degree with a 3.51 GPA. Ribich opened the year by winning the GNAC and NCAA West Region cross country titles and placed 30th at the NCAA Championships to earn All-American honors. Ribich went on to win GNAC indoor titles at 800 meters and the mile, placed third in the 3,000 meters at the national meet and anchored the national-champion distance medley relay.

Outdoors, Ribich repeated as GNAC champion in the 800 meters and 1,500 meters and defended his national title in the 1,500 meters with a time of 3:45.54. During the course of the season, Ribich set NCAA Division II all-time records indoors in the 1,000 and 3,000 meters and the outdoor record in the 1,500 meters. He also became the 501st American athlete to run a sub-four-minute mile, accomplishing the feat during the indoor season.