The NCAA Academic Progress Report for Eastern athletics this year shows that 21 of Eastern’s 22 intercollegiate sports have met the NCAA’s academic standards with several earning perfect scores.

Fifteen Eastern athletic teams maintained a team GPA of 3.0 or higher in the Spring 2007 semester with women’s cross-country boasting the highest team GPA overall with a 3.61 average. Men’s golf earned the highest men’s team GPA with a 3.36 overall and four of the 10 earning a perfect 4.0.

The overall average of Panther athletics was 3.10, with 247 of 437 student-athletes achieving a 3.0 GPA or higher during the Spring semester.

These 21 sports all received rankings from the NCAA that met or exceeded the organizations academic requirements. Wrestling was the only sport to fall below NCAA standards.

The failure of the Wrestling program to meet the NCAA criteria was the deciding factor in the decision last Thursday to discontinue the program, Athletic Director Rich McDuffie said.

However, the lowest overall team GPA for Spring 2007 was not wrestling, but men’s basketball.

Gail Richard explained that the APR rating is based on academic performance over several years and is not significantly affected by one semester’s grades. This, said Richard, makes it easier to track academic progress and does not penalize a school or program for having one bad semester.

Also, only students who are on scholarship to compete in their sport are included in the APR ratings. Teams often have several walk-on members or other recruits not on scholarship that are factored into team GPA, but not considered in the NCAA ratings. This ensures that students who receive financial aid are taking their academic success seriously, and properly representing their institution.

An outpouring of emotion resulted from Thursday’s decision, although Rich McDuffie said he was not overly surprised by the negative reaction he has received so far. He stated that he had anticipated a number of people would be emotionally upset and angered at the loss of opportunity for collegiate athletes at Eastern. McDuffie remained steadfast in his reasoning for cutting the program; however, citing the poor academic performance of the team as a whole and its overall affect on Panther athletics.

Around five years ago, the NCAA began the process of academic reform to ensure that education and obtaining a degree remained the priority of all student-athletes. Of all competitors in NCAA sports, only a very small percentage goes on to pursue professional careers as athletes. The NCAA established the academic criteria to ensure that student-athletes were graduating with the skills they need to compete in the workplace, not just on the field.

The new NCAA standards were enacted about three years ago with feedback and contributions from NCAA member schools. The organization collects data from member schools and releases an annual Academic Progress Report for member schools and ranks individual programs on a 1000-point scale. The APR is calculated based on eligibility status, retention and graduation. An acceptable score is considered 925 and 1000 is perfect. The wrestling program has received a score in the 800s for the past three years.

The program has suffered penalties the past two years as a result of their academic performance and further penalties could have larger ramifications for Eastern sports as a whole. Fourth year penalties could affect Eastern’s Division I classification. McDuffie stated that they wanted to wait and see if the academic standing of the squad could be improved before deciding to discontinue it; however, the low APR ratings reflect the lack of progress that has been made since the guidelines were enacted three years ago. Now with harsher sanctions a distinct possibility, he did not want to see other sports suffer as a result of one sport’s rating.

Programs are subjected to contemporaneous penalties for their first three years of non-compliance, which include: scholarship reductions; loss of playing and practice time; and could eventually result in exclusion from post-season competition.

According to an article from NCAAsports.com, teams can loose up to 10 percent of their scholarship money if they score below 925 and if a student fails academically and leaves school.

After a fourth year of falling below APR requirements, teams become subject to historical penalties which would mean all 22 sports could face losing their Division I classification.

NCAA member schools will be subjected to historical penalties beginning next year. The report is based on data compiled over the 2003-2004, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years.