The NCAA announced Scholar Team and Individual All-American award recipients last night at the Division III banquet in Cedar Rapids, IA.
The Alma College Wrestling team finished as the national runner-up in team GPA - improving from a 3.515 last year to a 3.603 in 2014 to place second out of the 96 Division III programs nationally.
From the NWCA: Criteria for the Team award is cumulative grade point average of 10 wrestlers, of which at least 6 must have competed at the NCAA Regional this year. The 10 GPAs are then averaged.
2013-14 NWCA Top 30 Scholar Teams
The Scots finished fourth in the nation last year and with no members of the team graduating this year, Alma looks to claim the academic title in 2015.
Individually, the Scots had four members earn Scholar All-American honors. Jr. Tyler Foley (New Hudson/South Lyon East) (3.63 GPA), Jr. Jared Groeneveld (Allendale/Allendale) (3.77 GPA), So. Jamie Jakes (Dearborn/Divine Child) (3.63 GPA) and So. Shawn Brewer (New Boston/Huron) (3.62 GPA) all garnered the academic laurel.
From the NWCA: A student-athlete must carry a GPA of at least 3.20 (cumulative or last academic year) and meet one of the three criteria: qualify for the NCAA Championships, place in top six at the NCAA qualifier, or win more than 66 percent of matches and wrestle in 50 percent of scheduled dates.
2013-14 NWCA Scholar All-Americans
Alma College was one of only 13 programs nationally to have four or more Scholar All-Americans named.
On the mat, Jakes will participate in day one of the NCAA Division III Championships in Cedar Rapids, IA today. The match will be streamed at approximately 12:15 p.m.
"We don't yet know Jamie's mat assignment or exact time he will wrestle, but we will post it on Facebook and tweet it @AlmaWrestling as soon as it gets assigned during the session," said Alma Head Coach Todd Hibbs.
UPDATE: Jakes will wrestle in the third match on Mat #2 - should wrestle about 12:15–12:30 p.m. EST
The match can be viewed by clicking here - be sure that you are tuning into mats from the NCAA Division III Championships in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
