APSU Sports Information
Nashville, TN – Austin Peay State University was accorded the Institutional Sportsmanship Award by the Ohio Valley Conference at Friday’s Honors Brunch at the Doubletree Hotel.
The award goes to the conference institution selected by its peers to have best exhibited the standards of sportsmanship and ethical conduct as outlined by the OVC and NCAA.
This is Austin Peay’s second institutional sportsmanship honor; the Govs last won the award following the 2007-08 academic year. Four different teams–women’s basketball, women’s golf, outdoor track and field and softball–took the OVC’s Team Sportsmanship honor for the 2016-17 season in their respective field.
The award, which was implemented in August 2003, is one of three accolades bestowed by the Conference to honor sportsmanship. In 1998, the league established the Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to a male or female student-athlete of junior or senior standing who best exemplifies characteristics of the late Morehead State University student-athlete and athletics director by way of significant athletics performance and good sportsmanship and citizenship.
For the past 12 years, the league has presented team-specific sportsmanship awards to programs at OVC member institutions based on the conduct of student-athletes, coaches, staff and administrators and fans, and voted on by the league’s coaches and student-athletes in each respective sport.
Also on Friday, Austin Peay picked up honors for OVC Digital Network production, Lawrence Baggett received his Thurston Banks Award and Dr. Sherry Hoppe was inducted into the OVC Athletics Hall of Fame. Those stories can be found in the links section accompanying this article on LetsGoPeay.com.
