Lamar sports information

BEAUMONT – Despite the fact the 2018 season ended two months ago, the honors continue to pour in for the Lamar men’s tennis team. The Cardinals have been named a 2018 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) All-Academic team. In addition to the team honor, five members of the team received ITA Scholar-Athlete recognition.

The members of the team who were honored include senior Logan Powell, juniors Lukas Grubelnig and Sebastian Santibanez and freshmen Nicolas Mayr and Roy Stepanov.

The ITA’s All-Academic teams and scholar athletes include 735 teams across junior college, NAIA and all three NCAA divisions, and consisted of more than 4,300 total athletes. All varsity letterwinners are factored into the GPA for the current academic year.

The ITA All-Academic team awards is open to any ITA program that has a cumulative team grade-point average of 3.2 or better.

In order for student-athletes to earn scholar-athlete recognition a player must be a letterwinner, have a minimum 3.5 GPA for the current year and have been enrolled at their current school for two semesters.

For the Cardinals, the ITA academic honors come on the heels of one of the most thrilling seasons in program history. After back-to-back Southland titles and NCAA appearances, many believed 2018 was going to be a rebuild after graduating four all-conference selections. The Cardinals got out to a slow start in the spring schedule which was aided by numerous matches being postponed or canceled due to the weather.

As the weather warmed up, so did the Cardinals. Big Red won its final match of the season to receive the final spot in the conference tournament. The Cardinals then put together one of the most memorable runs in tournament history knocking off the top two seeds to advance back to the NCAA Championships for a third consecutive season.

The Cardinals run came to an end in the opening round of the NCAA Championships against No. 5 overall seed Texas A&M. The Aggies advanced all the way to the Final Four before being ousted by eventual national champion Wake Forest.