The Elite 90 Award or more formally The Elite 90 Academic Recognition Award Program, originally the Elite 88 Award and later the Elite 89 Award, is an award by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recognizing the student athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average who has reached the competition at the finals site for each of the NCAA's 90 men's and women's championships across its three divisions (Division I, Division II, Division III).[1]
Students are eligible if they have achieved at least a sophomore in academic and athletic standing and if he or she is in at least the second year of competition (in any sport) at his or her current institution. A student in the first season of play at a new institution is eligible for the award if he or she sat out the previous season due to NCAA transfer rules while enrolled continuously at the current institution. The student athlete must be on the active roster, and in sports that have limits on squad size, must be a member of the designated squad size at the championship site.[1] Grade point averages are determined using a straight grading scale to ensure consistency among institutions. Additionally, only credits earned at the student's current institution are counted toward determining GPA; transfer and AP credits are specifically excluded. Graduate students who still have athletic eligibility may receive the award, but only undergraduate GPA is considered. In the event of a tie, completed credits is the official tiebreaker.[2] In sports such as golf and cross country running an individual who qualifies for the individual championship although his or her team is not competing will be eligible for the award.[3] Multi-sport athletes are only allowed to win one award per academic year, even if they would qualify for the award in more than one sport.[1]
Two groups of NCAA student-athletes are not eligible for the Elite 90 Award:
Participants in what the NCAA classifies as "emerging sports" for women, currently equestrianism, rugby union, and triathlon.[7] These sports are recognized by the NCAA, but do not yet have fully sanctioned status. Beach volleyball had been an "emerging sport" before becoming a fully sanctioned championship sport in 2015–16.
"National Collegiate" is the official NCAA designation for championships that are open to schools from multiple NCAA divisions. In most cases, the National Collegiate Championship is the only championship awarded in that sport. However, two sports—women's ice hockey and men's volleyball—have National Collegiate and Division III championships. By contrast, the men's ice hockey championships are designated as "Division I" and "Division III", although Division II schools can and do compete in that sport's Division I championship as Division I members.
The list includes only championships in fully sanctioned NCAA sports.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The South Atlantic Conference (SAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level, which operates in the southeastern United States. The SAC was founded in 1975 as a football-only conference and became an all-sports conference beginning with the 1989–90 season.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to its student athletes. For the 2021–22 season, it has 252 member institutions, of which two are in British Columbia, one in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the rest in the conterminous United States, with over 77,000 student-athletes participating. The NAIA, whose headquarters is in Kansas City, Missouri, sponsors 27 national championships. The CBS Sports Network, formerly called CSTV, serves as the national media outlet for the NAIA. In 2014, ESPNU began carrying the NAIA Football National Championship.
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate facilities and more athletic scholarships than Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.
An All-America team is either a high school- or higher education-level sports team composed of outstanding players in the United States. The players selected are broadly considered by media and other relevant commentators as the best positional players in a particular sport, for a specific season; for example, an All-American basketball point guard for the 2021–22 season. Such athletes at the high school and college level are referred to as All-Americans.
NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their student-athletes.
NCAA Division II (D-II) is an intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It offers an alternative to both the larger and better-funded Division I and to the scholarship-free environment offered in Division III.
The California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. All of its current members are public universities, and upon UC San Diego's departure on July 1, 2020, all are members of the California State University system.
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education.
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United States and to a certain extent in Canada, but in the vast majority of countries in the world they are rare or non-existent.
The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to track student-athletes chances of graduation. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.
In college athletics in the United States, recruiting is the process in which college coaches add prospective student athletes to their roster each off-season. This process typically culminates in a coach extending an athletic scholarship offer to a player who is about to be a junior in high school or higher. There are instances, mostly at lower division universities, where no athletic scholarship can be awarded and where the player pays for tuition, housing, and textbook costs out of pocket or from financial aid. During this recruiting process, schools must comply with rules that define who may be involved in the recruiting process, when recruiting may occur and the conditions under which recruiting may be conducted. Recruiting rules seek, as much as possible, to control intrusions into the lives of prospective student-athletes. The NCAA defines recruiting as “any solicitation of prospective student-athletes or their parents by an institutional staff member or by a representative of the institution’s athletics interests for the purpose of securing a prospective student-athlete’s enrollment and ultimate participation in the institution’s intercollegiate athletics program."
The Walter Byers Scholar program is a scholarship program that recognizes the top male and female student-athlete in NCAA sports and that is awarded annually by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It is considered to be the NCAA's highest academic award. The NCAA initiated the Walter Byers Scholarship program in 1988 in recognition of the service of Walter Byers. The award is a postgraduate scholarship program designed to encourage excellence in academic performance by student-athletes. The recipients each year are the one male and one female student-athlete who has combined the best elements of mind and body to achieve national distinction for his or her achievements, and who promises to be a future leader in his or her chosen field of career service. Winners receive scholarships for postgraduate study.
The Academic All-America program is a student-athlete recognition program. The program selects an honorary sports team composed of the most outstanding student-athletes of a specific season for positions in various sports—who in turn are given the honorific "Academic All-American". Since 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-American recognition on male and female athletes in Divisions I, II, and III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as well as athletes in the NAIA, other U.S. four-year schools, two-year colleges, and Canadian universities, covering all championship sports. The award honors student-athletes who have performed well academically while regularly competing for their institution.
Student athlete is a term used principally in the United States to describe students enrolled at postsecondary educational institutions, principally colleges and universities, but also at secondary schools, who participate in an organized competitive sport sponsored by that educational institution or school. The term student-athlete was coined in 1964 by Walter Byers, the first executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The term is also interchangeable with the synonymous term “varsity athlete”.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's intercollegiate sports teams, called the MIT Engineers, compete mostly in NCAA Division III. It has won 22 Team National Championships, 42 Individual National Championships. MIT is the all-time Division III leader in producing Academic All-Americas (302) and rank second across all NCAA Divisions. MIT Athletes won 13 Elite 90 awards and ranks first among NCAA Division III programs, and third among all divisions. Most of the school's sports compete in the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC), with sports not sponsored by the NEWMAC housed in several other conferences. Men's volleyball competes in the single-sport United Volleyball Conference. One MIT sport, women's rowing, competes in Division I in the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges (EAWRC). Men's water polo, a sport in which the NCAA holds a single national championship for all three of its divisions, competes in the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) alongside Division I and Division II members. Three sports compete outside NCAA governance: men's rowing competes in the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC), sailing in the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association of ICSA and squash in the College Squash Association. In April 2009, budget cuts led to MIT's eliminating eight of its 41 sports, including the mixed men's and women's teams in alpine skiing and pistol; separate teams for men and women in ice hockey and gymnastics; and men's programs in golf and wrestling.
College athletics encompasses non-professional, collegiate and university-level competitive sports and games.
The NCAA transfer portal is a compliance system created in October 2018 by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to manage and facilitate the process for student athletes seeking to transfer between member institutions. The transfer portal permits student athletes to place their name in an online database declaring their desire to transfer. Athletes enter the portal by informing their current school of their desire to transfer; the school then has two business days to enter the athletes' name in the database. Once an athlete's name is entered in the database, coaches and staff from other schools are permitted to make contact with the athlete to inquire about their interest in visiting the campus and accepting a scholarship. The portal was intended to bring greater transparency to the transfer process and to enable student athletes to publicize their desire to transfer. The transfer portal is an NCAA-wide database, covering transfers in all three NCAA divisions, although most media coverage of the transfer portal involves its use in the top-level Division I.
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