MACON, Ga.- Mercer had 95 student-athletes earn All-Academic honors during the 2003-04 season, as announced by the Atlantic Sun Conference office.
Mercer ranked fourth in the conference with 59 percent of its student-athletes earning above a 3.0 GPA, the requirement for the Academic All-Conference award.
Each of the 13 sports in which Mercer competes in the Atlantic Sun had at least two members named Academic All-Conference, led by men’s soccer with 16 qualifiers.
The women’s golf team was one of only seven squads in the conference and the only sport at Mercer to have 100 percent of its student-athletes on the Academic All-Conference list.
“We want our student-athletes to succeed in the classroom as well as on the playing field,” said Mercer Director of Athletics Bobby Pope. “We are proud of what our student-athletes accomplished and hope to build upon that next year.”
As a conference, a record-level 52.7 percent of student-athletes carried at least a 3.0 GPA. Belmont University won the A-Sun All-Academic trophy with more than 71 percent of its student-athletes meeting the requirement. Lipscomb University placed 63 percent of its participants on the teams, while Jacksonville University just beat out Mercer for the third-best mark in the conference with a 59.3 percent mark.
In all, five of Mercer’s 13 teams had at least 70 percent of its student-athletes earn Academic All-Conference honors. Men’s golf (83.3 percent), men’s soccer (80 percent), women’s cross-country (78 percent) and women’s tennis (71 percent) joined women’s golf on that list.
Of the men’s sports offered at Mercer, soccer had the most members on the Academic All-Conference team with 16. Baseball had 11 athletes qualify. Basketball had seven representatives, while golf had five; tennis, three; and cross-country, two.
In women’s sports, soccer had 11 athletes named Academic All-Conference; softball had 10; women’s golf, eight; volleyball, seven; cross-country, seven; tennis, five; and basketball, three.
