Women’s soccer earns United Soccer Coaches’ Team Academic Award

The EMU women’s soccer team has earned the Team Academic Award from the United Soccer Coaches. The award recognizes the team GPA from the 2017-18 academic year.

The Eastern Mennonite women had a team GPA of 3.50, which was second highest out of the seven ODAC teams who won the award, behind only Washington and Lee at 3.53.

This is the third time in the past four seasons that the team claimed the award from the coaches association, including back-to-back years in 2015 and 2016.

“What an outstanding achievement by our team from last year,” said fifth-year head coach Ted Erickson. “We have always pushed our players to focus on their academic success, especially since that will be the piece that will repay them for many years after college. In addition to the overall team success, I was extremely impressed to see we had one freshman, one sophomore, one junior and one senior who achieved a perfect 4.0 GPA for the 2017-18 school year.”

The United Soccer Coaches (formerly the National Soccer Coaches Association of American) started its team academic award in 1996. To qualify, a college team must hold a team grade point average of 3.0 or higher.

Entering this weekend’s game against Hollins, the Royals hold a record of 3-5-0, including 1-3-0 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Saturday’s game time is 7 p.m. in Harrisonburg.