Kentucky Receives ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Baseball team has been honored by the American Baseball Coaches Association with its Team Academic Excellence Award for 2018-19, the organization announced. UK is one of just 51 teams in Division I and two in the Southeastern Conference to receive the distinction.
 
The ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award honors high school and college baseball programs coached by ABCA members that post a cumulative team grade point average over 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for the current academic year. The Wildcats earned a 3.103 GPA and are the only SEC baseball program to earn the distinction each of the past two academic years.
 
“Everything we do in our program is built around developing young men, first and foremost, as students,” UK coach Nick Mingione said. “I could not be more proud of the effort and commitment our team continues to put into their academic growth. We also greatly appreciate the work our academic counselor Michael Stone and his team at CATS. do for our student-athletes. They are a critical piece of their development.”
 
In three years under Mingione’s leadership the program has had 86 SEC Academic Honor Roll and First-Year Academic Honor Roll recipients, including a league-high 25 in 2019. Additionally, the program has had its first SEC Student-Athlete of the Year, as well as a First-Team Academic All-American.