NEW ORLEANS, La. --- Moravian College has had two runners named United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association All-Academic individuals and its women's cross country squad honored as an All-Academic Team by the USTFCCCA for the 2015 season.
Moravian's honorees were juniors Meg Brockett and Sarah Hughes. Brockett is a nursing major at Moravian while Hughes is majoring in Law and Society.
To earn All-Academic individual honors, student-athletes must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.30 and have finished in the top 25 percent of the finishers at the NCAA Division III Regionals last November. That group total 352 women and 268 men including the two Greyhounds.
Brockett and Hughes helped the Greyhounds to a third place finish at the Landmark Championships hosted by the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Sunken Meadow State Park. Brockett placed fifth overall of the 82 competitors in the meet while Hughes grabbed the eighth spot. With the third place finish, Brockett was named to the Landmark Conference All-Conference First Team while Hughes grabbed the first spot on the Second Team only missing out on a top-7 finish my two seconds. Both runners were also named to the NCAA DIII All-Mideast Region Honors. Brockett finished 28th while Hughes crossed the line shortly after with a 31st place finish.
"I'm happy that our program has another year to work with both Sarah and Meg," commented Head Coach Jesse Baumann. "They do everything right, train extremely hard both in and out of season, they're both passionate about their majors, and in general are about as coachable as anyone I've ever worked with. They came to Moravian as good, but not necessarily stellar athletes based on their PRs and by their own doing, molded themselves into some of the best distance runners that have been at Moravian, which says a lot with this program's history. They're intrinsically motivated and it's the reason they've done so well as student athletes, and will continue to excel when they graduate from Moravian in about 16 months."
The women's team also maintained a 3.33 cumulative GPA after the fall semester and was one of 207 women's teams to earn All-Academic honors. To be considered an All-Academic Team, programs must have compiled a cumulative GPA of 3.10 or greater and competed in at least five different meets with at least five runners representing their school at each.
"A lot of the traits of strong students are the same traits that make good runners," Baumann said. "You have to be willing to make sacrifices and work hard when nobody else is watching, or when there are other things you'd rather be doing. It's not easy to study in the library when all your friends are watching a movie, or to head out the door for a long run when it's 15 degrees and snowing sideways. We've been fortunate to have a number of student-athletes who are the type of people who are willing to put in the work like that, and it's not surprising to see we've had a lot of success in recent years with our team both in the classroom and with running."
