|
|
|
Johnson Named First Team Academic All-American
First Lobo Under Head Coach Matt Henry Selected For The National Honor
Official CoSIDA Academic All-America Release in PDF Format
June 22, 2004 WALTHAM, Mass. - Senior Mark Johnson added another superlative to his long list of career highlights with his selection to the 2003-04 Academic All-America® Men's Track first team, which was announced today by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). Johnson, who earned his Master's of Business Administration in May, recently placed 15th in the decathlon at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The Fontana, Wisc. native is the first Lobo under fourth-year head coach Matt Henry to earn Academic All-America honors. A five-time all-Mountain West Conference honoree, Johnson competed in 173 events in his track and field career and won MWC titles in the decathlon (outdoor) in 2002 and heptathlon at the 2004 indoor championships. Earlier this month he became the first Lobo decathlete since 1985 to compete at the NCAA Championship meet and joined former men's soccer teammate Stian Eriksen as the only athletes in UNM history to appear in the NCAA Championships in two different sports. Johnson's teammate Matt Gonzales, meanwhile, earned All-America honors on the track for the second-straight year with his fourth place finish in the 10,000 meters at the 2004 national outdoor championships. Of the 31 first-team selections on both the University and College Divisions, seven had career GPAs of 4.00 or better, including Johnson. The others with perfect GPAs are Sharath Alampur (Ossining, N.Y.) of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Adam Copeland (Ooltewah, Tenn.) of Sewanee: The University of the South, Ryan Koch (Madison, Wisc.) of St. Cloud State, Benjamin Brewster (Findlay, Ohio) of the University of Kentucky, Kwesi Frimpong-Boateng (Accra, Ghana) of the University of Massachusetts, and Mark Steckler (Fargo, N.D.) of North Dakota State University. The Academic All-America Teams program honors 816 male and female student-athletes annually who have succeeded at the highest level on the playing field and in the classroom. Individuals are selected through voting by CoSIDA, the College Sports Information Directors of America; a 2,000-member organization consisted of sports public relations professionals for colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. To be eligible, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.20 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Division I, II, III and NAIA covering all NCAA championship sports.
For more information about the Academic All-America Teams program, please visit www.cosida.com or email rlipe@bentley.edu.
|
|
