• All-Time OVC Institutional Sportsmanship Award Winners
• Photo Gallery from OVC Hall of Fame Event
Eastern Illinois University has been named the recipient of the Ohio Valley Conference's annual Institutional Sportsmanship Award for 2023-24. The award goes to the Conference institution selected by its peers to have best exhibited the standards of sportsmanship and ethical conduct as outlined by the OVC and NCAA.
The award capped a big awards day for the Panthers at the end-of-year OVC Awards Banquet in Nashville. At the event former EIU men's basketball coach Rick Samuels was inducted into the OVC Hall of Fame. Dr. Jim Davis was named the winner of the Thurston Banks Award for Academic Excellence. Giovana Larregui Lopez was named the OVC Female Athlete of the Year. EIU won its fourth OVC Commissioner's Cup for overall athletic success during the academic year.Â
"Without sportsmanship there are truly no meaningful victories," said Beth DeBauche, OVC Commissioner. "In receiving this prestigious honor other institutions are saying these teams and student-athletes compete with class, respect their opponents and value fair play. That is quite a compliment as those are all traits that will lead to true victories throughout the course of life."
The award, which was implemented in August 2003, is one of three accolades bestowed by the Conference to honor sportsmanship. In 1998, the league established the Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to a male or female student-athlete of junior or senior standing who best exemplifies characteristics of the late Morehead State University student-athlete and athletics director by way of significant athletics performance and good sportsmanship and citizenship.
For the past 19 years, the league has presented team-specific sportsmanship awards to programs at OVC member institutions based on the conduct of student-athletes, coaches, staff and administrators and fans, and voted on by the league's coaches and student-athletes in each respective sport.
This marks the 20th time the Institutional Sportsmanship Award has been bestowed and the first award for Eastern Illinois.
In 1995, the Ohio Valley Conference implemented a first-of-its-kind "Sportsmanship Statement," a policy promoting principles of fair play, ethical conduct and respect for one's opponent. The statement answered the challenge of the NCAA Presidents Commission to improve sportsmanship in collegiate athletics, and has become a model for others to follow across the nation.
