![\"Jessica](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/elite88-june10.jpg\" "\\"elite88-june10\\"")
Introduced last fall by the NCAA, the Elite 88 award is given to the student-athlete with the best cumulative GPA participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 88 championships. As such, it provides a unique honor that recognizes universities with both high-achieving athletic programs (that can reach the finals of their sport) and students who are excelling in the classroom while participating in those sports.<\/p>\n
Three Bears were among the 88 Division I honorees this year, a total only two other schools in the nation (Stanford and North Carolina) can match.<\/a> Health science studies\/pre-med major Jessica Ubanyionwu<\/a> received the Elite 88 award at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in March, followed a month later by psychology major Lindsay Palmer<\/a> at the women’s basketball Final Four. Most recently, journalism major Diamond Richardson<\/a> was so honored at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.<\/p>\n As you may have noticed, track and field recorded two of the three award recipients for Baylor. The sport also notched two of Baylor’s school-record seven Academic All-America honors<\/em> this year, a total that easily beat the university’s previous record of five set in 2000. Those seven Bears represented six different programs: Sic \u2019em, Baylor track and field and all our student-athletes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introduced last fall by the NCAA, the Elite 88 award is given to the student-athlete with the best cumulative GPA participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 88 championships. As such, it provides a unique honor that recognizes universities with both high-achieving athletic programs (that can reach the finals of their sport) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-athletics","category-honors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n* football (Joe Pawelek<\/a>),
\n* baseball (Chris Slater<\/a>),
\n* softball (Nicole and Tiffany Wesley<\/a>),
\n* men’s tennis (Dominik Mueller<\/a>),
\n* men’s track and field\/cross country (Chris Gowell<\/a>) and
\n* women’s track and field\/cross country (Erin Bedell<\/a>).<\/p>\n