Arizona State’s Tiago Behar Wins Elite 90 Award for Highest GPA at Men’s NCAA D1 Championships

In a week where Arizona State’s men’s swimming & diving team has piled-up awards, another comes for work done outside the pool.

Tiago Behar was named the Elite 90 Award winner for the 2024 NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Behar, a junior, is majoring in computer science and holds a perfect 4.0 GPA.

This makes a sweep of the Division I awards for the Sun Devils this season: US National Team member Lindsay Looney won the women’s award.

The award is given every year to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average who competes at the final site of each of the 90 NCAA Championships. Eligibility requires that athletes must have been a member of their team for at least two years and be an active participant at the championship competition.

In cases of ties, the student-athlete with the most completed credits wins the award.

Past ASU Elite 90 Winners

  • 2009-10 – Andy Workman (Baseball), Finance, 3.903
  • 2012-13 – Bailey Wigness (Softball), Communication & Political Science, 4.00
  • 2013-14 – Ianeta Hutchinson (Water Polo), Psychology, 4.00
  • 2017-18 – Roberta Liti (Women’s Golf), Management/Business (Sports & Media Studies), 4.00
  • 2023-24 – Lindsay Looney (Women’s Swim and Dive), Family and Human Development, MS, 4.00
  • 2023-24 – Tiago Behar (Men’s Swim and Dive), Computer Science, 4.00

Behar finished 46th in the 50 free (19.58), 47th in the 100 free (42.56), and 29th in the 200 free (1:32.86) at the NCAA Championships, all of which are new personal bests.

He finished 7th in the 200 free at the Pac-12 Championships.

Behar is a native of Lutry, Switzerland.

Arizona State won the men’s NCAA title in Swimming & Diving last weekend in Indianapolis. In addition to Behar’s award, Arizona State head coach Bob Bowman was named the SwimSwam Coach of the Year, Leon Marchand was named the SwimSwam Swimmer of the Year, Zalan Sarkany was named the SwimSwam Breakout Swimmer of the Year, and Ilya Kharun was named the SwimSwam Freshman of the Year.

ALL-TIME WINNERS, ELITE 90 AWARD, NCAA DIVISION I MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING

 

YEAR AWARD NAME DIVISION SCHOOL CONFERENCE SPORT MAJOR GPA
2010 Elite 90 Elliott, Andrew 1 The Ohio State University Big Ten Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Finance 4.00
2011 Elite 90 Farra, Justin 1 The Ohio State University Big Ten Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Political Science and Economics 3.874
2012 Elite 90 Sterling, Brent 1 University of Tennessee, Knoxville Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Biological Sciences 3.98
2013 Elite 90 Sterling, Brent 1 University of Tennessee, Knoxville Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Biological Sciences 3.98
2014 Elite 90 Stewart, Tynan 1 University of Georgia Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving English 4.00
2015 Elite 90 Stewart, Tynan 1 University of Georgia Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving English and Cognitive Science 4.00
2016 Elite 90 Lile, Nathan 1 Gardner-Webb University Big South Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Computer Science 4.00
2017 Elite 90 Ransford, Patrick 1 University of Michigan Big Ten Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Mechanical Engineering 4.00
2018 Elite 90 Ransford, Patrick 1 University of Michigan Big Ten Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Mechanical engineering 4.00
2019 Elite 90 Reilman, Joey 1 University of Tennessee, Knoxville Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Industrial Engineering 3.94
2021 Elite 90 Oh, Micah 1 U.S. Naval Academy Patriot League Men’s Swimming and Diving Applied Math 4.00
2022 Elite 90 Knowles, Eric 1 NC State University Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Materials Science 4.00
2023 Elite 90 Maas, Derek 1 University of Alabama Southeastern Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Biology 4.00
2022 Elite 90 Behar, Tiago 1 Arizona State University Pac-12 Conference Men’s Swimming and Diving Computer Science 4.00

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Seth
7 months ago

4.0 gpa and a stem major, wow.
I didn’t have a 4.0 in college and I didn’t play sports.

I bet swimmers probably have better gpas than football and basketball players, perhaps since swimmers have little opportunity of going pro.

K Chilly
7 months ago

Heisman

Sun Yangs Hammer
7 months ago

🤓👆

Swammer80
7 months ago

imagine earning an award for academics and athletics on the NCAA championship winning team… and people are trashing the weight of your degree in a swimswam comment section? Go outside ppl

Jonathan
7 months ago

Seems like a dumb award to me. GPAs aren’t comparable from one school to another.

And unless you’re trying to go to grad school, no one really cares about your GPA after you graduate.

This Guy
Reply to  Jonathan
7 months ago

Pretty sure there is a very strong correlation between GPA and career success after graduation, regardless of school

Chad
Reply to  Jonathan
7 months ago

boomer talk right there… I worked at SpaceX and with few exceptions they refuse to hire anyone under a 3.5. I know a few other companies that are similar.

DLswim
Reply to  Jonathan
7 months ago

Agree at some level. With grade inflation going wild in elite schools like the ivy leagues and Stanford, a 4.0 in CS at ASU actually means more!

Lisa Schaffer
7 months ago

Way to go, Tiago! The Schaffer fam is super proud of you, in the pool and the classroom 💪

Stewart Fenwick
7 months ago

I mean, how do you compare GPA given at ASU with those at Stanford?

25Backstroke
Reply to  Stewart Fenwick
7 months ago

Fair point, but still impressive considering Computer Science/Math/Engineering/Pre-Med are all going to be more difficult still at ASU than Communications at Stanford (or Spanish at Cal if you’re a native Spanish speaker – looking at you, Hugo)

jeff
Reply to  Stewart Fenwick
7 months ago

I mean Stanford is known for having very high GPAs so not sure if that’s the best comparison. I’d imagine Princeton is perhaps the toughest to get perfect grades at out of the schools that were at the D1 swim & dive championships

Facts
Reply to  jeff
7 months ago

Electrical engineering at Georgia Tech + D1 swimming would be an egregiously hard combo

CAA Swammer
Reply to  Facts
7 months ago

In terms of raw workload, yes. However, Georgia Tech has no ± grades which arguably makes it easier to achieve 4.0 rather than a 3.9.

I agree with the general sentiment here that a winner-takes-all approach to this award doesn’t make much sense. They should be recognizing students who are in some top percent of their respective school, much like latin honors.

CELL
Reply to  jeff
7 months ago

Nah all of the ivies have grade inflation

jeff
Reply to  CELL
7 months ago

Most of them do, I don’t think Princeton does though. Up until (less than) 10 years ago, they even had a mandatory grade deflation policy

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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