CHARLESTON, Ill. -- Eastern Illinois athletics featured an Ohio Valley Conference-high eight teams with perfect Academic Progress Rate (APR) data for the 2008-09 academic year, unveiled with the release of the data by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Wednesday.
EIU women's basketball, men's golf, women's golf, women's soccer, softball, men's swimming, men's tennis and women's tennis all posted perfect 1,000 APR rates through 2008-09 data.
Morehead State also had eight programs with perfect APRs.
The APR provides a real-time look at a team's academic success each semester or quarter by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete. The APR includes eligibility and retention in the calculation and provides a clear picture of the academic culture in each sport. The APR awards are based on a two-point system – one point for academic eligibility and one point for academic retention. A team's APR is the total points earned by the team at a given time divided by the total points possible, multiplied by 1,000. Multi-year APR includes four years of data (this year's numbers included the academic years of 2005-06, 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09).
Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year, based on the eligibility and retention of each scholarship student-athlete. Teams that score below 925 on their four-year rate and have a student leave school academically ineligible can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships through contemporaneous penalties. Teams can also face historically based penalties for poor academic performance over time.
Previously (on May 12), six OVC teams were among those who received public recognition for multi-year APR scores from the years 2005-06 through 2008-09. The five OVC teams honored included three from Eastern Illinois University (men's golf, women's golf and women's soccer), two from Morehead State University (mixed rifle and women's soccer) and one from Murray State University (women's tennis). Those programs were among the top 10 percent of all schools within its sport for the four-year period.
The data showed an improvement in league APR overall, as well as marked improvements in the sports of football, men's and women's basketball and baseball. Also among the data were 57 Ohio Valley Conference sport programs which received a perfect 1,000 score for the past academic year; each OVC member institution had at least one program earn that honor.
Overall Ohio Valley Conference programs combined for a 966 multi-year APR score, the highest score for the OVC in the five years for which APR data has been tracked. That marked an improvement from a score of 960 a year ago and was up from a total of 948 just three years ago.
The league also showed improvement in terms of eligibility trends, improving from a score of 983 to a score of 987.
In the sport of football the league had an APR of 958, the highest mark in the five years of APR data. The 958 was an improvement from 934 a year ago and was tied for fourth among the 13 Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) conferences and tied for seventh among the 24 total Division I conferences (both FCS and FBS).
In the sport of men's basketball the OVC had an APR of 941, up from 910 a season ago. The 941 was also the highest total the league had achieved in the five years of APR data. In women's basketball the league total was 962, up from 931 in 2007-08 and the highest total since APR data has been collected.
The league also improved in the sport of baseball, scoring 963, once again the highest APR in this sport for the Conference over the past five years. Looking at APR data specifically from the 2008-09 academic year, there were 57 OVC sport programs which received a perfect 1,000 score for that academic year. That is up from a total of 37 sport programs who achieved perfect scores a season ago.
OVC Programs Who Posted Perfect 1,000 APR Scores for 2008-09 (57 in total)
Austin Peay (6): Men's Basketball, Men's Tennis, Women's Basketball, Women's Cross Country, Women's Golf, Women's Tennis
Eastern Illinois (8): Men's Golf, Men's Swimming, Men's Tennis, Women's Basketball, Women's Golf, Women's Soccer, Softball, Women's Tennis
Eastern Kentucky (4): Men's Golf, Men's Tennis, Men's Indoor Track, Men's Outdoor Track
Jacksonville State (4): Men's Golf, Women's Tennis, Women's Volleyball, Rifle
Morehead State (8): Baseball, Men's Cross Country, Men's Outdoor Track, Women's Basketball, Women's Tennis, Women's Outdoor Track, Women's Volleyball, Rifle
Murray State (7): Men's Cross Country, Men's Golf, Men's Tennis, Women's Basketball, Women's Cross Country, Women's Golf, Women's Tennis
Southeast Missouri (4): Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Women's Gymnastics, Women's Tennis
SIU Edwardsville (7): Men's Tennis, Women's Basketball, Women's Cross Country, Softball, Women's Tennis, Women's Outdoor Track
Tennessee State (3): Men's Tennis, Women's Basketball, Softball
Tennessee Tech: (3): Women's Golf, Softball, Women's Volleyball
UT Martin (3): Men's Tennis, Women's Volleyball, Rifle
