Brent Sterling, a diver at Tennessee, has been honored as the NCAA’s Elite 89 Award Winner from Men’s Swimming. This means that his 3.978 GPA is the highest among all participants at this weekend’s NCAA Championship meet. This follows last week where Florida Gulf Coast’s Emma Svensson received the same honor at the women’s meet with a perfect 4.00 GPA.
Sterling placed 15th on the 1-meter competition on Thursday for the Volunteers; he’s a junior biochemistry and molecular biology major for the Volunteers. This is the second-straight year that he has received this honor that, now in its 4th year of existence, has grown in prestige and prominence. That makes him the first ever repeat-winner of this award in swimming at the Division I level (though Kellen Beckwith and Tessa Dover both did it in Division III).
Svensson is a part of an incredible month of athletic accomplishment for Florida Gulf Coast. Not only did their basketball team make an improbable run to the sweet 16, but before that Svensson became the swimming program’s first ever NCAA qualifier: a program that’s nary half-a-decade old. Svensson’s run is even more impressive, as the sophomore economics major hails from Sweden and had to adapt to a new country, a new language, and still maintained a perfect GPA.
(Ties are broken by the student with the most credits completed).
Editor’s Note: We will acknowledge Division II and Division III award winners as soon as we nail down who they are. There is conflicting information on exactly who won at least one of those awards.
Past Division I Award Winners:
Men
2013 Brent Sterling, Biological Sciences, Tennessee, 3.978*
2012 Brent Sterling, Biological Sciences, Tennessee, 3.98
2011 Justin Farra, Political Science, Ohio State, 3.874
2010 Andrew Elliott, Finance, Ohio State, 4.0
Women
2013 Emma Svensson, Florida Gulf Coast, Economics, 4.0*
2012 Wendy Trott, Georgia, International Affairs, 3.975
2011 Alyssa Conner, Texas A&M, Marketing, 4.0
2010 Ella Doerge, Texas A&M, Genetics, 4.0
