For the fourth straight year, Bert Luallen’s Seward

County Lady Saints Volleyball team has been awarded the AVCA Team

Academic Award. This season the Lady Saint join a record crowd of over

450 different men’s and women’s high school, junior college, NCAA, and

NAIA volleyball teams to be given the award. However, the Lady Saints

are one of just eight teams at the two-year college level to be given

the award.

The award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic

year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that displayed

excellence in the classroom during the school year by maintaining at

least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a

4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.

The Lady Saint stand in elite company with the award

this season with only seven other schools in their class. Allen County

and Dodge City were the only other two Jayhawk schools to earn the award

with the other five schools being Dawson CC (Mont.), Linn-Benton CC

(Oreg.), North Platte CC (Nebr.), Northeastern JC (Colo.), and Redlands

CC (Okla.).

“There is no better way to gauge the success of a sport

than to track the accomplishments of the people who participate,” said

AVCA Executive Director Kathy DeBoer. “Each of these 450 teams

represents 12-15 really smart kids. What a great day for the sport of

volleyball” she continued.