SUU Gymnastics Claims Tenth Academic National Championship Add Comment    Aug 06, 2010

CEDAR CITY, Utah - July 20 - SUU Gymnastics claimed its tenth academic national championship since 1993 as the team finished with a combined grade point average of 3.8923 to earn the award for the 2009-10 season.� The T-Birds finished ahead of their academic rival, Southeast Missouri State, which finished with an overall GPA of 3.8905.�

"I'm proud of our girls for having worked so hard in the classroom," head coach Scott Bauman said.� "We hold our gymnasts to a high standard when it comes to academics and when we compete and our girls did a great job at both last season."�

Ari Lamb, Caitlin Kennedy, Elise Wheeler and Melissa Johnson led the way for the T-Birds with perfect 4.00 GPA's during the year.� However, the numbers did not drop sharply from there as Bailey Baker (3.97), Brooke Cersosimo (3.97), Shannon Coughlin (3.91), Lauren Jeffrey (3.92) and Anna Schumacher (3.99) narrowly missed perfect marks.� In all, SUU had 12 gymnast with at least a 3.60 or better during the 2009-10 academic year.�

Wisconsin-Lacrosse (3.6600), Western Michigan (3.6323) and Michigan State (3.6194) rounded out the top five as Southern Utah also finished ahead of in-state rivals Utah (3.4985, 9th), Utah State (3.2921, 39th) and Brigham Young (2.9576, 66th).�

Southern Utah is slated to begin the 2011 season at Utah State on January 7 with the home opener against reigning national champion UCLA set for January 14.

-Utah College Sports News staff and wire reports

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Utah College Sports Wire