Spring 2018 CSCAA Scholar All-America Teams
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue swimming & diving teams both earned Scholar All-America honors for the second time of the 2017-18 school year, ranking among the best in the Big Ten via their team grade-point averages.
The College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America announced its latest batch of Scholar All-America Teams on Tuesday. Twenty of the Big Ten's 23 programs were among those recognized. Across all divisions of the NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA, 710 swimming & diving teams representing 476 institutions were commended for having 3.0-plus team GPAs during the 2018 spring semester.
The Purdue women rose to No. 2 in the Big Ten with a 3.52 GPA during the spring semester, which coincidences with swim-dive's championship season. Only Ohio State (3.54) had a higher mark in the league. The Boilermakers' GPA climbed from 3.43 in the fall and 3.35 in the spring of 2017.
The Purdue men ranked fourth in the Big Ten with a 3.22 GPA this past spring. Though it dropped a bit from the fall semester (3.32), it was still higher than the team's GPA from the fall (3.13) and spring (3.18) semesters of the 2016-17 school year. Michigan State (3.45) was tops among Big Ten men's teams again. Michigan (3.29) and Minnesota (3.25) were the only other conference rivals ahead of the Boilermakers.
Individual Scholar All-America honorees will be announced by the CSCAA next week. The Boilermakers had 18 student-athletes recognized last summer. A GPA of 3.5 or higher coupled with at least one NCAA provisional qualifying time (B Cut) earns a student-athlete at least honorable mention accolades.
Purdue swimming & diving accounted for 45 of the 202 (22 percent) Boilermakers to earn Academic All-Big Ten honors during the 2017-18 school year. The women's 27 honorees matched football for the most of any sport. The men were fourth with 18. Student-athletes earn Academic All-Big Ten recognition for cumulative GPAs of 3.0 and higher after being enrolled for a full year at their university.
As 2018 graduates with strong GPAs, Hanna House and Chris Bals were selected as Purdue Athletics' recipients of the Big Ten postgraduate scholarships this year. They'll both receive $7,500 scholarships for their continuing education. It marked the third time in the six-year history of the annual scholarships that a pair of Purdue swimmers were selected as recipients. House and Bals were among the 14 members of swimming & diving to graduate in May.
Earlier this month, two-time graduate Marat Amaltdinov was named third team Academic All-America, becoming just the 11th Boilermaker student-athlete in the last 20 years to be a two-time Academic All-American. He was also Purdue's male recipient of the Big Ten Medal of Honor, becoming the 11th member of the program to receive the prestigious honor that dates back to the 1915.