Two Stetson Athletics programs earned perfect multiyear scores in the recently released 2017-2018 NCAA Academic Progress Rate Institutional Report.

Also, four other Hatters programs earned perfect single-year APR scores. 

Essentially, the APR is an annual scorecard of academic achievement calculated for all Division I sports teams nationwide. Implemented in 2003 as part of an ambitious academic reform effort in Division I, the APR holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term. 

At Stetson, all 17 NCAA sports performed well above the 930-minimum threshold on the four-year APR report. Beach volleyball and men’s cross country excelled the greatest, with both sports achieving perfect multiyear scores of 1000. They were honored with NCAA Public Recognition Awards for posting APR scores in the top 10 percent of their sport.

The other 15 programs scoring high multiyear APRs: men’s golf (986), men’s soccer (985), women’s soccer (983), women’s golf (982), lacrosse (981), softball (981), indoor volleyball (979), women’s rowing (975), men’s tennis (974), women’s tennis (974), football (968), baseball (967), women’s cross country (942), women’s basketball (940) and men’s basketball (940). (Men’s rowing at Stetson is not an NCAA championship sport.) 

In addition, the four programs to achieve perfect 1000 single-year APR scores for the 2017-2018 academic year were beach volleyball, men’s cross country, men’s soccer and men’s tennis.

Note: Among the most recent examples of Stetson’s success in the classroom is sophomore runner Reece Duff. In May, Duff was named to the Google Cloud Academic All-District team for men’s track and field and cross country. Duff, a molecular biology major with a 3.97 cumulative GPA, also made the ASUN All-Academic team, and last fall he posted a personal-best 8K time (26:22.2) at the University of Florida Mountain Dew Invitational.

The APR is calculated as follows:

• Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible.
• A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate.
• In addition to a team’s current-year APR, its rolling four-year APR also is used to determine accountability.

The APR represents an incentive-based approach to accountability and comes with a progression of penalties for teams that underperform academically over time.

At Stetson, however, clearly there has been no such underperformance.

-Michael Candelaria and Stetson Athletics