OGDEN, Utah-Per the latest NCAA Academic Progress Report, or APR, Weber State athletics continues to see consistent improvement across the board.
All 14 intercollegiate athletic programs Weber State sponsors reached the NCAA’s required minimum score of 930 or better for this past academic year. Furthermore, no penalties were assessed against any Wildcats’ program.
Six Wildcats athletic programs also had a perfect single-year APR score for the 2016-17 academic year. Weber State’s women’s cross country, soccer, tennis and volleyball teams all scored above the national average of 983.
Weber State’s football team had its highest multi-year score in program history at 946.
This past year, Weber State has graduated 60 current or former student-athletes, while 184 student-athletes have earned Big Sky Academic All-Conference honors.
All over Division I, academic excellence is increasing, confirmed by a 2-point increase in the Academic Progress Rate.
This overall four-year rate increased to 983 while four-year rates for baseball, football and women’s basketball each increased 2 points to respective scores of 975, 964 and 982. Men’s basketball players raised their overall, four-year APR by a point, to 967.
Every Division I sports team (the amount of Division I schools will be 353 as of July 1) calculates its Academic Progress rate each academic year. The NCAA reports both single-year and four-year rates, on which penalties for poor academic performance are based.
Each semester, scholarship student-athletes earn one point for remaining eligible and one point for staying in school or graduating.
In 2004, the Division I membership created the Academic Performance Program and since then, 16,000 former athletes earned APR points for their prior teams by returning to college after their eligibility ran out.
Of those 16,000, more than half participated in football, baseball or basketball, Division I’s highest-profile sports.
