By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee Tech Athletics continued its recognition of the best and brightest of its more than 300 student-athletes by releasing two more winners of its 2020 Golden Wings Awards.
On Tuesday it was announced that the soccer team was named the Large Academic Team of the Year while the women's golf program was honored as the Small Academic Team of the Year.
The large team included the squads with rosters of 15 or more student-athletes, while the definition of small team was squads with rosters of less than 15 student-athletes. The winners were determined by the highest team GPA spanning the spring semester of 2019 and fall semester of 2019.
For the soccer team, it marked the fifth straight year capturing the Large Academic Team of the Year honor. The soccer program is the only Tennessee Tech team to earn the honor since its inception in 2015-16.
The team put forth team GPAs of 3.72 in the Spring of 2019 and 3.54 in the Fall of 2019 for an average team GPA of 3.63.
The women's golf team earned its first-ever Small Academic Team of the Year Award, compiling a 3.43 team GPA for the two semesters. The program finished the Spring of 2019 with a mark of 3.38 and the Fall of 2019 with a 3.48 GPA.
Women's golf joined the tennis team and women's cross country team as the three teams to have claimed the honor. The tennis program earned the award in 2016, 2018 and 2019 while the women's cross country squad was the winner in 2017.
The Golden Wings Awards, which enters its fifth year, is an end-of-the-year award ceremony for the Tennessee Tech University student-athletes to honor and celebrate their academic and athletic accomplishments over the past complete seasons.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent cancellation of the remainder of campus activities for the 2019-20 academic year, the annual awards show was also canceled. The choice was made to still honor the student-athletes for their accomplishments, however, as each competitive season drawn from to determine the honors had been completed.
The timeframe of the awards period is the current season (2019-20 in this instance) except for sports that compete in the spring, including baseball, softball, outdoor track & field, men's golf, women's golf and tennis. With those sports typically competing with a large portion of their seasons still left at the time of the awards show, the previous campaigns (2018-19 in this instance) are recognized. The Man and Woman of the Year awards encompass the 2019-20 period for all sports.
Prior to the 2019 Golden Wings Awards, men's golf, women's golf and tennis were included from their current season, but due to scheduling conflicts and to allow a more complete campaign from which to gather nominees, the three sports were added to the rest of the spring sports in using its previous season for consideration.
Prior to the first Golden Wings Awards show, Tennessee Tech Athletics annually presented four awards to deserving student-athletes, including Male Athlete of the Year, Female Athlete of the Year, Man of the Year and Woman of the Year. The first honor established, for the 1990-91 academic year, was the Woman of the Year Award, coinciding with the first NCAA Woman of the Year Award. Two years later, in 1992-93, Tech established its Man of the Year Award. Both the Male Athlete of the Year and Female Athlete of the Year honors were added for the 1993-94 academic year. The four honors were officially adopted into the Golden Wings Awards, including criteria, for the 2016-17 academic year and all previous winners can also be found in the all-time list below.