GREENSBORO, NC – For the fifth consecutive year, the McNeese baseball team was announced as an ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award recipient, the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) announced on Wednesday.

The AABCA's Team Academic Excellence Award honors high school and college programs coached by ABCA members that post a cumulative Grade Point Average over 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for the current academic year.

This achievement has been obtained by the Cowboys every year that the award has been in place and they are one of only 12 Division 1 teams in the country to receive the award for 5 straight years. 

McNeese is also the only team in the Southland Conference, as well as the only program in the states of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas to earn this award for the past five years.

McNeese also received the APR Recognition Award this past spring, which lists the Top 10 percent of APR scores in each sport.

The Cowboys are joined by Abilene Christian as the only two Southland Conference representatives on this year's ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award list.

The ABCA 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/Diamond Sports Regional & National Coaches of the Year and several other major awards such as the ABCA Hall of Fame and Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award.