Baseball Earns Sixth ABCA Academic Award

GREENSBORO, N.C. – For the sixth consecutive year, the East Carolina baseball team received the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Team Academic Excellence Award the association announced this week.

The Pirates, who sported a program-best 3.64 GPA for the 2020-21 academic year, are one of six American Athletic Conference teams to be honored joining Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulane, USF and Wichita State. ECU has registered a 3.41 or higher grade point average for the past four years, including a team-best 3.69 in the spring of 2021, which bested the previous program-record GPA of 3.61 (spring 2020).

Under head coach Cliff Godwin, a two-time Academic All-America selection, the Pirates have had a combined 325 selections on the ECU Director of Athletics Honor Roll (3.0 grade point average or higher). In Godwin's seven years leading the East Carolina program, nearly 100 players have earned AAC All-Academic Team honors - including 38 of 40 members from the 2021 club.

ECU has also earned six-straight AAC Team Academic Excellence Awards and boasted the highest team GPA of all baseball programs in The American since the 2015-16 academic year. Five players have earned CoSIDA Academic All-America honors since 2016 (Travis Watkins/2016 first team, Charlie Yorgen/2016 third team, Jake Agnos/2019 first team, Alec Burleson/2019 third team and 2020 first team and Matt Bridges/2021 third team). Last year Burleson became the third player in program history to be named a two-time Academic All-America selection joining Godwin (1999, 2001) and Sam Narron (2001-02).

In back-to-back years, ECU Baseball has also had a student-athlete presented with the Male Scholar-Athlete-of-the-Year Award by the American Athletic Conference. Agnos was the first student-athlete in school history to win the award in 2019, which was followed by Burleson in 2020.

Players Mentioned

Matt Bridges

Alec Burleson

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