Monday, August 17, 2020
ATLANTA – The Seattle Pacific women's basketball team is back among the nation's academic elite.
For the sixth time in program history, the Falcons have earned a Top 25 Team Academic Award from the Women's Basketball Coaches Association of America (WBCA). Seattle Pacific made the NCAA Division II list at No. 22 with a 3.652 cumulative team GPA.
Falcons coach Mike Simonson said the national award was the icing on an already-successful academic year.
"At the beginning of the season, we had a list of goals, and one of those was we wanted to have the highest team GPA in our conference," Simonson said. "To be top 25 nationally wasn't a benchmark we had looked at. But we did get the highest GPA in our conference, and our players worked tremendously hard all season to accomplish the goal."
This year's team GPA is higher than any of the previous five times the Falcons garnered a WBCA team award. Their previous best was 3.572 in 2013-14. The last time the team was among the top 25 in D2 was in 2014-15 with a 3.550.
In February, four Falcon players, Hailee Bennett, Madi Hingston, Rachel Berg and Natalie Hoff, made the Great Northwest Athletic Conference All-Academic Team.
In July, Hoff, Hunter Bierne and Ashlynn Burgess won GNAC Faculty Athletic Representative Scholar-Athlete awards for maintaining a 3.85 or higher GPA. A total of 29 Falcons across all sports were on that list.
"We have kids who are in electrical engineering, accounting, difference sciences, and they really achieved academic success in some tough majors," Simonson said. "They do a good job of managing their time well to achieve not only on the court, but in the classroom. It shows the competitive heart they have that they want to do well."
Seattle Pacific was the only GNAC school and one of just three West Region schools on the list. The other two from the West were No. 12 Point Loma Nazarene and No. 20 Chaminade.