Both the men’s and women’s swim teams were named to the College Swimming Coaches Association of America Fall Scholar All-American team for the 2016 fall semester.

The women were tied for seventh with an impressive 3.64 while the men had a 3.35, which put them at 13^th overall for Division I.

Coach Jacqueline Michalski said it was an honor to have her student athletes get recognized.

“One of the things I’ve always believed in as a coach is that I coach student athletes and just not athletes,” Michalski said. “So to be recognized for our GPA is a real big honor.”

Michalski said getting recognized form the CSCAA shows that the team knows that the hard work in the classroom is paying off.

Michalski has been at the helm of the Panthers’ swim teams since 2014 and the women have made that list every semester she has coached.

The men have only made that list three times since. In Michalski’s first year, the women had the highest GPA in the nation for both the fall and spring semesters. She said that the GPA dropped off a little bit because some of the swimmers were taking harder classes, but the team has been ranked high on the CSCAA’s list.

According to the CSCAA’s website, a total of 394 institutions with 638 teams were named to the CSCAA’s Scholar All-America Team.

The awards are given out to teams that have a GPA higher than a 3.0. There were an additional 91 teams added along with 36 more institutions; up from last year.

For women’s programs, 91 percent of Division I teams met or exceeded the 3.0 mark. The average for women’s teams was 3.34. The top team was Iona, which had a 3.69. Finishing ahead of the Panthers were Brown and Yale, which had 3.68 GPAs, Bowling Green with a 3.66, Southern Illinois-Carbondale and Marshall with a 3.65.

For men’s programs, 71 percent exceeded the 3.0 mark with an average of 3.22.

The leader for the men’s program went to Grand Canyon University with a 3.68. The next closest was Brown with a 3.55.

Michalski said that being a student athlete for swimming is not that easy.

“We train 20 hours a week. Where some of the other sports at times, they might be doing things for 20 hours but its film or more technical stuff,” Michalski said. “Our season goes both semesters. We started the first week of school and then we go up until basically midterms of second semester.”

Michalski said the swim team had 10 4.0 GPAs in the fall and   that the team is doing what they need to do in the classroom and inside the pool.

Tyler McCluskey can be reached at 581-2812 or at trmccluskey@eiu.edu