WCC Fourth Overall in RPI

by Stonehouse Mon May 12, 2008 9:36 am

I missed this release from last week:

The West Coast Conference was once again among the nation's best in the classroom as the NCAA released it's sport-by-sport Academic Progress Rate (APR) report. As a conference, the WCC ranked fourth in the nation, trailing only the Ivy League, the Patriot League, and the Atlantic Coast Conference.

"The schools within the WCC have always prided themselves on achieving athletic success, while maintaining academic excellence," said WCC Commissioner Michael Gilleran. "The APR report reaffirms the strong commitment to academics from the student-athletes, faculty, and staff at our member institutions."

Seven of the WCC's 13 sponsored sports earned top 10 APR rankings. The WCC once again proved to be one of the premier women's soccer conferences in the country on and off the field as the league ranked second in the nation in women's soccer APR with a score of 984.4 out of a possible 1,000 points.

Also earning top 10 APRs were Men's Soccer (4th), Men's Cross Country (5th), Women's Basketball (5th), Men's Basketball (6th), Men's Golf (6th), and Women's Volleyball (9th). In addition, 11 of the WCC's 13 sports earned higher APR marks than the national average.

http://wccsports.cstv.com/genrel/050808aaa.html

Pretty impressive, I would say, though not really surprising. The WCC definitely has most of the academic elite D1 schools on the west coast, and there is no shame in trailing the Ivy and the Patriot Leagues, which have some of the best schools in the country in them. Of course, the WCC has been MUCH more athletically successful than those two conferences.

I was a little surprised at first that the ACC was up there, but when you think about it, the ACC has a lot of really good schools... Virginia, Duke, Wake Forest, North Carolina... so I guess I'm not that surprised at all.