Four Times Up, Four Times a Winner
And the winner of the Conference USA Institutional Excellence Award for the fourth straight year is, ta-da! Rice University.
The award is given to the C-USA institution with the highest grade point average during the academic year for all student–athletes in conference-sponsored sports. For 2008–09, Rice student–athletes combined for an annual GPA of 3.099, which is the highest in the Owls’ current four-year run. The Owls have won the C-USA Institutional Excellence Award every year since joining the conference.
The Rice football, women’s swimming and women’s tennis teams all won the C-USA Sport Academic Award for having the highest team GPA in the league for the 2008–09 academic year. The women’s tennis teama posted the highest annual GPA of any sport at 3.748. The Owl swimmers had the highest team GPA — 3.531 — of any other Division I women’s or men’s swim program in the nation. And not only did Rice football record the league’s best team GPA at 2.843, the Owls won 10 games, including a postseason victory in the Texas Bowl.