Pirate Baseball Earns National Academic Honor

The American Baseball Coaches Association is thrilled to announce the over 300 member college and high school programs from across the country who have been awarded the 2018-19 ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award. For the second straight year, Ventura College baseball is listed among the honored teams from every level of college and high school baseball.  VC achieved an overall grade point average of 3.24 for the entire 2018-19 academic year to earn recognition from the ABCA.

This year, 315 college and high school programs received this year's award, including 214 programs from the NCAA Div. I, II, III, NAIA, and junior college levels. VC is one of only 25 community college programs to be honored, one of just two from Southern California and four from the entire state.

"We are proud to once again honor the academic achievements of so many of our member programs," said ABCA Executive Director Craig Keilitz. "The off-the-field success of this year's award winners is a testament to the hard work of the student-athletes and the commitment of coaches and academic personnel to developing well-rounded individuals."

The Pirates were led in the classroom by VC's 2019 Male Scholar Athlete of the Year TJ Foreman, along with Ethan Balolong-Reyes and Travis Weston, all of whom earned perfect 4.0 GPA's. Other Pirates who were named to the Dean's list with above a 3.5 GPA included Blake Campbell, Jared Gray, Jackson Hickert, Tommy Jamieson, Sam Langler, Sergio Linares, Arman Muradian, Miles Minier, Junior Sandoval, Sam Silverya and Jeff Thoben.

Coaches were able to nominate their teams for the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award following the conclusion of their spring semesters prior to the nomination deadline of July 19. To be honored, teams had to meet the following criteria:

• Must be a high school or college team.
• Head coach must be a current ABCA member.
• Team must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale during the 2018-19 academic year.

The American Baseball Coaches Association has a long tradition of recognizing the achievements of baseball coaches and student-athletes. The ABCA/Rawlings All-America Teams are the nation's oldest, founded in 1949, and the ABCA's awards program also includes the ABCA/Rawlings All-Region Awards, the ABCA/Diamond Regional & National Coaches of the Year and several other major awards such as the ABCA Hall of Fame and the Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award.