** During the month of July, EIUPanthers.com looks back at 14 events, moments and players that helped shape the 2025-26 academic year. **
 
Eastern Illinois was named the recipient of the Ohio Valley Conference's annual Institutional Sportsmanship Award for 2025-26. 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.

It marked the 22nd time the Institutional Sportsmanship Award has been bestowed and third-straight award for Eastern Illinois.

In addition to winning the conference wide Sportsmanship Award for 2025-26, EIU had five teams win their individual sport award from the OVC during the academic year with beach volleyball, football, men's indoor track & field, men's outdoor track & field and women's outdoor track and field all winning.

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 20-plus 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.

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.