Friday, July 30, 2021
GREENSBORO, N.C. - The American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) released the recipients of the 2020-21 Team Academic Excellence Award, with Northwest Nazarene baseball earning the honor for the third-straight season.
The award highlights programs coached by ABCA members that posted a GPA of 3.0 or above on a 4.0 scale for the entire 2020-21 academic year.
The Nighthawks, who registered a team GPA of 3.25 over the course of the academic year, are the lone GNAC program represented on the list. NNU was one of seven West Region programs to receive the accolade.
Over 380 collegiate baseball programs were honored with the award this year, including 77 NCAA Division II programs.
The Team Academic Award is the latest honor for a Northwest Nazarene baseball program that won the GNAC championship and became the first NCAA West Region champion in conference history. Many of those awards have come on the academic side.
Senior Ben Johnson was named the winner of the NCAA Elite 90 Award for Division II baseball, which is awarded to the student-athlete at each championship finals site with the highest cumulative GPA. Johnson and teammate John Gonzales were named earlier this week as CoSIDA Division II Academic All-Americans.