LACEY, Wash. - A couple weeks removed from taking home the GNAC's top spot in the Academic All-Sports Championship, the Saints' baseball team earned a selection to the American Baseball Coaches Association Team Academic Excellence Award on Wednesday.

The Saints finished with a 3.31 GPA, and 16 members of the team earned GNAC All-Academic last season. Saint Martin's was one of two schools from the GNAC to earn the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award, along with Northwest Nazarene.

From the ABCA Release - "The American Baseball Coaches Association is proud to recognize the nearly 700 member college and high school programs from across the country that have been awarded the 2021-22 ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award, which is presented by Sports Attack. Teams from every level of college and high school baseball were honored with this year's award, which highlights programs coached by ABCA members that posted a GPA of 3.0 or above on a 4.0 scale for the entire 2021-22 academic year.

Over 250 high school programs and more than 420 collegiate programs were recognized with this year's award.

Coaches were able to nominate their teams for the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award following the conclusion of their spring semesters prior to the nomination deadline of July 14. To be honored, teams had to meet the following criteria:

• Must be a high school or college team
• Head coach must be a current ABCA member
• Team must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale during the 2021-22 academic year

The American Baseball Coaches Association has a long tradition of recognizing the achievements of baseball coaches and student-athletes. The ABCA/Rawlings All-America Teams are the nation's oldest, founded in 1949, and the ABCA's awards program also includes the ABCA/Rawlings All-Region Awards, the ABCA/ATEC Regional & National Coaches of the Year and several other major awards such as the ABCA Hall of Fame and the Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award."