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AU Volleyball Team Earns Academic Recognition from AVCA
AU one of Nine NCAA Tournament Qualifiers on List

August 9, 2002

Junior Karla Kucerkova was the Patriot League Volleyball Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2001.

WASHINGTON — The American Volleyball Coaches Association and Molten, U.S.A., Inc. have named the American University volleyball team one of 47 NCAA Division I schools to earn the 2001-02 AVCA/Molten Team Academic Award. The Eagles, which boasted a team grade-point-average (GPA) of 3.42, are just one of nine teams that qualified for the 2001 Division I NCAA Tournament to be honored.

The award cited a record total of 177 college and high school teams this year that displayed excellence in the classroom by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team GPA on a 4.0 scale and a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale during the school year.

The award is one in a series the Eagles have accumulated for the 2001 season. Junior Karla Kucerkova (Olomouc, Czech Republic/Brno) was named to the Verizon District 2 Academic All-America First Team and tabbed the Patriot League’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year after leading the Eagles to a perfect 14-0 league record and a trip to the NCAA Tournament with a 26-4 final record. Kuverkova was also picked as the Most Valuable Player of the Patriot League Championship Tournament. The Patriot League Academic Honor Roll recognized a league-high 10 AU volleyball players last fall for producing a GPA of 3.2 or higher.

Another member of the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll, Natalie Hand (Keizer, Ore./McNary), was also a member of the Verizon Academic All-America Team and received the Alan Taylor Memorial Prize for her work in Middle Eastern Studies.

The 2002 AU women’s volleyball season starts Aug. 31 at the Louisville Classic. Highlighting the schedule is The American Volleyball Classic on Sept. 20 and 22. The Eagles will host perennial national powerhouses Florida, Penn St. and Ivy League representative Yale University.

American University, which fields a 19-sport NCAA Division I athletics program featuring 10 women’s sports and nine for men, recently completed its inaugural year of membership in the Patriot League. The University had an extremely successful year to date on respective fields of play, capturing league championships in men’s soccer, women’s volleyball, men’s tennis and women’s tennis, and regular-season titles in men’s basketball and women’s lacrosse.

Chartered by an Act of Congress in 1893, American University features students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and more than 160 nations worldwide.