COLUMBUS — Mississippi University for Women’s volleyball team racked up another academic award this week, taking home the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s prestigious Team Academic Award for a fifth straight year.
Academics is greatly valued in The W’s athletic department, and as a whole the school’s student-athletes posted a combined 3.26 grade point average for the Spring 2024 semester. Of all the programs, the volleyball team posted the highest collective GPA of 3.46, with 16 players boasting a GPA of 3.00 or higher.
The Owls team finished the year among more than 1,400 collegiate and high school volleyball programs that maintained a grade-point average of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale, or 4.1 on a 5.0 scale.
MUW was also named to the AVCA’s Team Academic Honor Roll, which recognizes programs that finish in the top 20 percent for their respective division. This was achieved in the university’s first year as an NCAA Division III member.
The 2023-24 year was also the university’s first as a full member of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The volleyball team had four players named to the SLIAC All-Academic Team for the Fall 2023 semester: Amonie Silas, Madison Suggs, Llayne Skinner and Hannah Duran. All four players were also named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team.
MUW joins conference members Webster University and Westminster College as the only three SLIAC schools to be honored by the AVCA, and Westminster and the Owls were the only two SLIAC schools named to the AVCA Team Academic Honor Roll.
The Owls have a new coach in town, Breylee Linder, who greatly values the academic experience of her student-athletes and their ability to excel beyond the volleyball court. She is currently finishing up a master’s degree in kinesiology, and her continued pursuit of education was something that factored into her decision to take the job at MUW.
“Something I always prioritized was academics first, which was hard at that level, but it was something I really loved about The W,” Linder said in an interview with The Dispatch earlier this summer. “It’s Division III so it’s very academically driven, and when talking about the priorities of the institution and athletic department it lined up with my priorities as a student-athlete.”
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