NJCAA Honors 16 Saints for Academics

Academic awards from the 2015-2016 school year continued to pour in for Seward County student-athletes on Thursday as 16 Saints and Lady Saints were honored with NJCAA Academic Student-Athlete Awards as announced by the governing body.

For the first time in history, freshmen were included in the consideration for the NJCAA academic awards and three Seward rookies took advantage, garnering the organizations highest honor as women’s basketball’s Erin Richardson, baseball’s Errett Edwards, and volleyball’s Jade Piper were named Pinnacle Award for Academic Excellence winners for achieving a 4.00 GPA this year.

Seven Lady Saints were given the organization’s second highest award which is the Superior Academic Achievement Award for logging a GPA this year between 3.80 and 3.99. Women’s basketball and volleyball each had three make the list including Lady Saints hoopsters Daniela Galindo, Leslie Speer, and Neidy Ocuane and spikers Megan Sharratt, Alex Wood, and Kaysie Paxton. Rounding out the group of seven was softball’s Kennedy Brunson.

Four different Seward programs were represented in the Exemplary Academic Achievement Award winners section for student-athletes with between a 3.60-3.79 GPA. Lady Saint softball players Hannah Clark and Jaidyn Mawhinney led the group that included volleyball players Lindsey Schwab and Viviane Viana, women’s basketball player Shania Liggett, and Lady Saints tennis star Tadi Mrewa.

A record 4,557 NJCAA student-athletes were awarded academic awards for the 2015-2016 school year, led by the Jayhawk Conference which finished with just under 500 total recipients.

Roy Allen