Kentucky Baseball Receives ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award

The Kentucky Baseball team has been honored by the American Baseball Coaches Association with its Team Academic Excellence Award for 2020-21, the organization announced. UK is the only program in the Southeastern Conference to have earned the distinction each of the past four years.
 
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 3.44 overall GPA for the 2020-21 academic year and had the highest team GPA of all men’s teams on campus both semesters.
 
“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 every year.”
 
“We also greatly appreciate the work our academic counselor Michael Stone and his team at C.A.T.S. do for our student-athletes. They are a critical piece of their development.”
 
In four years under Mingione’s leadership the program has had 159 SEC Academic Honor Roll and First-Year Academic Honor Roll recipients, including a league-high 39 in 2020-21. Additionally, the program has had its first SEC Student-Athlete of the Year, as well as First-Team and Second-Team Academic All-Americans.