Matador Women's Basketball named as NJCAA Academic All-American Team
Lady Matadors’ 3.139 team GPA puts them in elite national company for 2007-08 season
Arizona Western College is proud to announce that the AWC Women’s Basketball team has earned a spot on the NJCAA Academic All-American Teams list for the 2007-08 academic year. The team achieved the honor with a 3.139 cumulative team grade point average in 2007-08. The announcement comes just three days prior to the start of the 2008-09 fall semester on the AWC campus.
This past year, the squad got off to a great start by placing 5 members of their 15-woman roster on the Dean’s List (meaning they achieved a 3.6 GPA or higher) during the fall semester, and finishing the semester with a 3.138 CGPA, the 2nd-highest in the program. Starting power forward Tanya Clark and backup guard Maria Garcia both paced the way for the ladies with perfect 4.0 GPAs during the fall. The spring semester saw the same academic excellence with 5 more student-athletes earning Dean’s List spots, including perfect 4.0 grade point averages during the spring for Garcia and backup center Arpine Amirkhanyan. For the year, eight members of the team finished with a cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher, including Garcia’s 4.0 GPA for the year. The success for the team didn’t end in the classroom, either, since their 21 wins on the court in 2007-08 was their highest number of wins in a season since the 2004-05 campaign. Their head coach has spent the last 12 months admiring the team’s work ethic in the classroom, and is ecstatic about the team’s prospects of bettering that academic mark this year. “Our coaching staff is proud of this past year’s team and its academic achievements,” remarked AWC Women’s Head Basketball Coach Patrick Cunningham. “(Lady Mats’ Assistant) Coach (Marisol) Arenivas did a good job working with the team members in organizing their approach to their studies, and the players were focused enough to understand the importance of managing time, school and basketball. We work hard as a coaching staff to recruit players that understand it’s about gaining that education, and basketball is only a small part of the big picture.”
Cunningham will welcome this year’s group of Lady Matador Basketball players next week when the ’08 fall semester opens August 18th. The Lady Matadors will take the floor to kick off their 2008-09 basketball season in early November.
