Three of Eastern Washington University women’s teams in cross-country, basketball and golf were honored by the NCAA with academic progress rate public recognition awards.

Every year, the NCAA honors Division I sports teams by awarding the fact that teams earned a high academic progress rate for multiple years. Teams who receive public recognition awards must rank in the top 10 percent.

The academic progress rate is a scoring system where a team’s academic information is analyzed each quarter or semester. Every student-athlete on scholarship gets their academic progress tracked by the NCAA.

The lady Eagles this year ranked in the top 10 percent nationally among all Division I university sports teams. This year marked the third time that the golf team was honored. The women’s cross-country team was also honored for the third time, and the women’s basketball team was honored for the second time.

Cross-country coach Chris Zeller is proud to have his team win an award of this stature. “It’s great, the No. 1 reason they’re here at Eastern Washington University is to get a degree,” Zeller said. “The first time Bill Chaves meets with all teams in the fall, he tells every student-athlete ‘your No. 1 job here is to earn your degree.’ It’s great to see not only that they’re on the road to doing that, but they’re doing it really successfully.”

Head women’s basketball coach Wendy Schuller is also satisfied to have her players do well academically. “It makes me happy obviously because bottom line is that that’s why we’re here,” Schuller said. “We’re here to get an education and get a college degree, the basketball is kind of a means to an end. Ultimately, the education is what we’re after.”

Schuller appreciates how her players work hard on and off the court. “I love the fact that we’ve got a team that’s committed to basketball but is also committed to getting their education,” Schuller said.

Assistant athletic director for compliance Joel Vickery explained the process of the academic process rate and how the three EWU teams rank in the top 10 percent nationally. “Basically, it’s a score out of 1,000,” Vickery said. “What goes into that score are eligibility points and retention points of scholarship student-athletes.”

According to Vickery, eligibility points are defined as how student-athletes work academically each quarter to be eligible to play on their respective teams. Retention points represent whether or not student-athletes stayed and attended every quarter during the year.

In order to successfully calculate the academic progress rate for each EWU team, Vickery stated that the number of student-athletes on scholarship per team is divided by the number of eligibility and retention points. The quotient is then multiplied by 1,000 to get the academic progress rate score. The benchmark all EWU teams have to meet is 930 out of 1,000.

The Eagles cannot fall below that. Each EWU sports team is required to meet that benchmark.

Zeller explained how well his student-athletes have done this year to keep their grades up. “If you want to be excellent in one area of your life, you’ve got to apply those same principles to every walk of life that you’re involved in,” Zeller said. “If it’s time to study, you got to be all in on studying. If it’s time to be practice, be all in at practice.”

“It takes having the right kids that are able to buy into those things, and that are able to be good time managers, self motivated and self disciplined,” Zeller said. “So clearly, at Eastern, we’ve been doing a good job of getting those types of student-athletes.”

Schuller talked about how her team focuses on keeping their grades up. “We make a big deal about not missing class,” Schuller said. “I know they work hard, they’re prepared for every class and they study hard.

I think it helps a lot that, again, they came in as serious students; they were serious students in high school,” Schuller said. “I think that if you have a foundation, then it’s going to be easier when you get to college. I think we recruit players who have a pretty solid foundation, they come from families where academics [are] important.”

Vickery explained how an honor like this helps the reputation of EWU athletics. “Those teams work extremely hard not only in their athletics but obviously with the APR public recognition.Top 10 percent, that’s great recognition,” Vickery said. “It shows the hard work that they’ve put in consistently.”