LEXINGTON, Ky. --- The American Volleyball Coaches Association released a record 1,125 college, including Moravian College, and high school volleyball teams that received the 2018-19 AVCA Team Academic Award.

The award, which began in 1992-93, honors college and high school teams that displayed excellence in the classroom by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average during the 2018-19 school year. The total number of schools honored passed last year's record mark of 977 schools honored in 2017-18. Nominating coaches must be AVCA members.

The AVCA Team Academic Award has become one of the AVCA's fastest growing awards programs, seeing an impressive surge in teams honored over the past several years. Since the 2000-2001 season, the number of recipients have increased every single year but two, while more than doubling the total over the last eight academic years. Since the award's inception in 1993, the amount of award winners has increased from 62 to its current number of 1,125.

Girls high school led the way with 444 recipients, an increase of 86 over last year. NCAA Division I leaped ahead of NCAA Division III to bring in the second-most recipients adding 25 programs from a year ago for a total of 189. NCAA Division III is third with 175 (+2) while NCAA Division II is next with 141 (+13). One of the fastest growing sectors for this award is high school boys/collegiate men, notching a +10 increase for a total of 62 honorees. Collegiate beach is another fast-growing category with that area of the sport nearly doubling last year's total from 22 to 41.

Moravian, under the direction of 27-year head coach Shelley Bauder, earned the AVCA Team Academic Award for the 12th time since the award was started. The Greyhounds and fellow Landmark Conference schools Elizabethtown College, Juniata College, The University of Scranton and Susquehanna University received the honor.

"I'm so proud of this team for earning the AVCA team academic award again," stated Bauder. "It's a goal of ours every year to achieve a minimum team GPA of 3.3 and from the first-year students to the seniors they exceeded that goal. I'm looking forward to another great year in the classroom and on the court for 2019.

Coach Bauder and the Greyhounds begin their 2019 season on Friday, August 30 when the squad hosts Penn State-Harrisburg and Grove City College in Johnston Hall as part of the 17th Annual Greyhound Premiere.

To view the entire 2018-19 AVCA Team Academic Award recipients, visit https://www.avca.org/awards/avca-team-academic-award.html.