EMCC - Athletics: Sports, News, Players, and Coaches. Go Lions! - EMCC student-athletes earn NJCAA team and individual academic honors

SCOOBA –East Mississippi’s softball, women’s basketball and baseball teams have earned 2009-2010 NJCAA All-Academic Team honors, while three EMCC student-athletes have collected NJCAA Academic All-American accolades. The national selections were released Thursday by the NJCAA office headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Pacing East Mississippi with NJCAA All-Academic Team honors from this past 2009-2010 school year, head coach Kate Neely’s EMCC softball club put together an impressive 3.47 cumulative grade point average to rank seventh nationally among NJCAA Division II softball teams. On the field, the Lady Lions made a second straight appearance in the MACJC state softball playoffs.

Under the guidance of head coach Sharon Thompson, the EMCC women’s basketball team also collected NJCAA All-Academic Team plaudits by posting a 3.13 cumulative GPA in the classroom and finishing with a 15-13 record on the hardwood.

Collecting NJCAA All-Academic Team honors for the second straight year for having a cumulative team GPA of 3.00 or better, members of the 2010 EMCC baseball squad maintained a composite 3.08 GPA for all hours attempted during their collegiate careers. Individually from the Lions’ 2010 ballclub, sophomore pitchers Corey Luke (Preston/Philadelphia HS) and Cody Pounders (Columbus/New Hope HS) claimed NJCAA Academic All-American status with cumulative GPAs of 3.79 and 3.67, respectively.

Having paced the EMCC men’s soccer team in scoring each of his two seasons on the Scooba campus, Leonardo Reyes also landed NJCAA Academic All-American laurels with a 3.65 cumulative GPA. The Arima, Trinidad native capped his EMCC athletic career by earning NJCAA All-Region 23 honors as a sophomore.

Student-athletes who achieved a cumulative grade point average of 3.60 to 3.79 on a 4.00 scale for 60 quarter hours or 45 semester hours earned NJCAA Academic All-American recognition, while those posting a cumulative GPA of 3.80 or better garnered NJCAA Distinguished Academic All-American honors.

This year over 1,300 NJCAA student-athletes met the requirements for the individual academic honors, while over 340 teams qualified for academic team accolades.