Five Titans Collect USTFCCCA All-Academic Honors
UW-Oshkosh's Kallen Bentz excelled athletically and academically to repeat as a member of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's (USTFCCCA) All-Academic Team.
Bentz was among five UW-Oshkosh men selected to the 2016 All-Academic Track & Field squad, with the others being Jordan Carpenter, Hunter Effa, Garrison Griest and Ryan Paulick.
Bentz, a sophonore biomedical engineering major with a 3.61 GPA, earned All-America honors as a member of UW-Oshkosh's sixth-place 400-meter relay team at the 2016 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championship.
Carpenter, who owns a 4.00 GPA as a graduate student in business administration, collected All-America accolades with his second-place finish in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2016 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championship. His performance followed a winning effort in the same event at the 2016 Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Outdoor Championship.
Effa, a junior kinesiology major with a 3.64 GPA, placed 10th in the long jump at the 2016 NCAA Division III Indoor Championship.
Griest, a sophomore physical education major with a 3.77 GPA, joined Bentz in helping UW-Oshkosh's 1,600-meter relay team finish ninth at the 2016 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championship. Griest and Bentz also ran on the Titan's victorious 1,600-meter relay squad at the 2016 WIAC Outdoor Championship.
Paulick, a senior physical education major with a 3.86 GPA, placed sixth in the shot put outdoors and seventh indoors at the 2016 WIAC championships.
The USTFCCCA recognized 293 NCAA Division III student-athletes from 109 schools, including 15 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 14 from UW-La Crosse. Including the counts from UW-La Crosse and UW-Oshkosh, WIAC member institutions had 47 student-athletes receive All-Academic mention.
The USTFCCCA selected Tyler Burdorff of Baldwin Wallace University (Ohio), Max Leonard of Illinois Wesleyan University, Daniel Pietsch of Emory University (Ga.) and Josh Thorson of UW-Eau Claire as its Scholar Athletes of the Year.
To qualify for the USTFCCCA's All-Academic Track & Field Team, student-athletes must own a minimum GPA of 3.30 and have either competed in an NCAA indoor or outdoor championship or finished the regular season ranked in the national top 35 of an individual event or in the national top 25 of a relay event on the official NCAA Proof of Performance list.
The USTFCCA also selected UW-La Crosse as its Indoor Scholar Team of the Year and UW-Eau Claire as its Outdoor Scholar Team of the Year. Waynesburg University (Pa.) led all NCAA Division III schools with its 3.70 GPA during the 2016 season.