APSU Sports Information
Clarksville, TN – Usually in Austin Peay State University’s yearly top-10 countdown, APSU takes special care to identify each individual who was named Ohio Valley Conference Coach, Player, Freshman or other comparable “Of the Year” honor for their respective sport, because that’s a big deal and needs to be recognized as such.
But, well… there were too many this year, so they all get to go here.
Between coaches and players, 14 members of the Austin Peay extended family earned one of the top honors for their respective sport in 2017-18, including five Freshman of the Year honors.
Volleyball set the pace, with Ashley Slay (Player), Kristen Stucker (Setter) and Taylor Mott (Coach) taking a trio of postseason awards for the eventual OVC Tournament champions in the fall.
Weeks later, quarterback Jeremiah Oatsvall (Freshman) would join his head coach, Will Healy, in securing postseason hardware after the Govs went from the cellar to deserving of an FCS playoff berth in less than a year.
On the hardwood, Terry Taylor took home Freshman of the Year honors after a record-setting campaign, while first-year APSU Men’s Basketball head coach Matt Figger also picked up Coach of the Year honors—the first by a first-year Austin Peay men’s basketball coach since the man he replaced, Dave Loos.
The spring session yielded another bevy of honors, including an OVC first when Sara Robson and Amy McCollum split the women’s golf Coach of the Year honor. Robson, who stepped down in November, picked up a win in her final tournament as head coach, while McCollum didn’t miss a beat once she took over as Austin Peay secured four top-five finishes under her tutelage in the spring.
For her work during the outdoor season, Morgan Bradley was named OVC Freshman of the Year—an honor that none of her pole vaulting predecessors, including APSU Athletics Hall of Famer Carrie Burggraf and teammate and five-time OVC gold medalist Savannah Amato, can claim. Bradley picked up a silver medal during the outdoor championships to cap her excellent freshman season.
The hardcourt and the softball diamond yielded the final four big honors for Austin Peay this season. For the women’s tennis team, Lidia Yanes Garcia became the first player in league history to win three Player of the Year honors, and she was joined on the postseason honors dais by teammate Fabienne Schmidt, the third player in program history to earn OVC Freshman of the Year honors and first since Yanes Garcia in 2015.
Thanks to a record-breaking season, the softball program brought home Pitcher of the Year and Freshman of the Year honors, bestowed upon Morgan Rackel and Bailey Shorter, respectively. Rackel tossed the program’s first no-hitter in 21 years as part of her stellar first season in Clarksville, while Shorter was a vital catalyst in the lineup.
