Eagles secure All-Academic Team honors while Strayer and McCambridge earn individual awards
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Carson-Newman cross country team has been named to the NCAA Division II Cross Country All-Academic teams on the men’s and women’s sides.
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Carson-Newman cross country team has been named to the NCAA Division II Cross Country All-Academic teams on the men's and women's sides.
Sophomore Rachel Strayer (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) and graduate student Conal McCambridge (United Kingdom) have both been named All-Academic Athletes as well.
The women's team finished with a collective grade point average of 3.61 while the men notched a 3.2.
"We focus here a lot on being a student first and an athlete second," Carson-Newman coach Luke Greer said. "So, the fact that they're working as hard in the classroom as they are on the field is a testament to them."
Strayer, a member of the 2019 South Atlantic Conference first-team and last year's conference Freshman of the Year, has added yet another laurel to her list.
This season Strayer became the first individual female Carson-Newman runner to be selected to attend the Cross Country National Championships since Aubrey Morris in 2008. The exercise science major set a career-best time in the 6k, finishing at 21:39.6, good enough for 101st-place out of 261 participants.
"She's only a sophomore and she's already doing these things on and off the field," Greer said. "She's a leader for the girls as well despite being an underclassman. I hope she can continue that trend and continue to be that leader."
McCambridge made a splash in his first and only year on the Eagles cross country team. The graduate student was the first male Eagle to finish in every event this season. McCambridge took 16th at the SAC Championships and placed 35th at the NCAA Southeast Regional.
"He's a great role model for the younger people on the team," Greer said. "We've got a young, young team. The young guys have someone to look up to that's a real leader. For him to do it in the classroom as well as he did it on the course was definitely impressive and is going to make the program better."
McCambridge is studying to receive his master's degree in Business Administration at C-N.
Overall, there were 403 women and 263 men across the country who were named All-Academic Individuals in NCAA Division II.
The qualifications for the honor include a having a cumulative fall semester GPA of at least 3.25 on a 4.0 scale and finishing in the top-30 percent of the athlete's regional championship meet.
