SUNY Oneonta Volleyball Earns Team Honor

The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) announced today that SUNY Oneonta was among the record 1,125 teams that earned the AVCA Team Academic Award for the 2018-2019 season. This number breaks the previous year’s total of 977 to set an all-time high.

The Red Dragons are being recognized for the third time in program history and first since 2017. The Red Dragons had a cumulative team GPA of 3.49 this past year, which includes both the fall and spring semesters. Leading the squad of 15 student athletes was rising senior Gillian Stieglitz who achieved a perfect 4.0 for both semesters as a Business Economics major.

The award, which was initiated in the 1992-93 academic year, honors collegiate and high school volleyball teams that displayed excellence in the classroom during the school year by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.

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 was third with 175 (+2) while NCAA Division II was 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.

Over 1,000 different schools have earned the award in the program’s 25-year history, with exactly 9,586 awards been given out in total.

Oneonta finished the 2018 season with an overall record of 14-17 while finishing with a record of 3-6 in the SUNYAC. The Red Dragons open the 2019 season on Friday, Aug. 30 versus SUNY Canton at the SUNY Cortland Classic.