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HomeSportsAustin Peay State University Track and Field receives OVC Team Sportsmanship Award

Austin Peay State University Track and Field receives OVC Team Sportsmanship Award

APSU Sports Information

APSU Women's Track and FieldBrentwood, TN – For the seventh time in program history, Austin Peay State University track and field has earned the Ohio Valley Conference Women’s Track and Field Team Sportsmanship Award.

This is the second year in a row and fourth time in five seasons head coach Doug Molnar‘s squad has earned the outdoor honor. Austin Peay has earned five sportsmanship honors in outdoor competition and two more during indoor season.

Austin Peay head coach Doug Molnar's team earns OVC Women's Track and Field Team Sportsmanship Award. (APSU Sports Information)
Austin Peay head coach Doug Molnar’s team earns OVC Women’s Track and Field Team Sportsmanship Award. (APSU Sports Information)

The track and field team is the fourth APSU program to earn an OVC Team Sportsmanship honor for the 2016-17 season, joining women’s basketball, women’s golf and softball.

Voted on by the student-athletes and coaches of the respective sports, the team awards are bestowed upon Conference squads deemed to have best exhibited the standards of sportsmanship and ethical behavior as outlined by the OVC and NCAA. Included in the areas for evaluation are the conduct of student-athletes, coaches, staff and administrators and fans.

Belmont took the honor on the men’s side.

“Without sportsmanship there are truly no meaningful victories,” said Beth DeBauche, OVC Commissioner. “The recipients of the OVC Team Sportsmanship awards should accept this award with great pride for their fellow competitors have made it clear their teams exemplify the best in intercollegiate athletics.

“In receiving this prestigious honor other competitors are saying these student-athletes compete with class, respect their opponents and value fair play. That is quite a compliment as those are all traits that will lead to true victories throughout the course of life,” DeBauche stated.

Implemented in August 2005, the team honors are the most recent addition to an awards program that recognizes and celebrates sportsmanship within the Conference. In 1998, the league established the Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to a male or female student-athlete of junior or senior status who best exemplifies the characteristics of the late Morehead State student-athlete, coach and administrator.

Five years later, the Conference added the OVC Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to the member institution selected by its peers to have best exhibited the standards of sportsmanship and ethical behavior as outlined by the OVC and NCAA.

In 1995, the Ohio Valley Conference implemented a first-of-its-kind “Sportsmanship Statement,” a policy promoting principles of fair play, ethical conduct and respect for one’s opponent.  The statement answered the challenge of the NCAA Presidents Commission to improve sportsmanship in collegiate athletics, and has become a model for others to follow across the nation.

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