Friday Cardinal Couple - Lots of Academics

We've talked about it plenty, but summer is really a slump time for collegiate athletics news, but one of the things that saves our sanity as Cardinal Couple writers, typically in the early-to-mid summer timeframe, is getting a spate of academic honors and lists to celebrate the student aspect of student athletes.

This year has been different in many ways, but this has thankfully stayed true to form.

The latest is the announcement of the ACC Honor Roll.  The Honor Roll is composed of varsity level student athletes that maintained a GPA of 3.0 for the academic year.  This isn't the most stringent of academic honors, but the impressive thing here is the sheer number of student athletes achieving this.  In fact, it's a record number for UofL.

A total of 413 athletes made the honor roll.  On the women's side of things, a majority of the athletes made the honor roll on all of the teams.

Basketball 12 of 16

Cross Country 7 of 10

Field Hockey 22 of 24

Golf 7 of 9

Lacrosse 30 of 31

Rowing 39 of 51 (varsity vs novice?)

Soccer 24 of 30

Softball 17 of 19

Swim and Dive 27 of 34

Tennis 7 of 10

Track and Field 26 of 38

Volleyball 11 of 16

We've highlighted a variety of players in the past for their academic honors, so they are, of course, on this list as well...Cardinal Couple favorites like Celene Funke, Aiko Jones, Dana Evans, and plenty more.

I did want to throw out a few examples that I think are particularly impressive, such as Norika Konno, Mercedes "Meche" Pastor, Margot Bechadergue (Golf), Nikolina Jovic (Tennis), Arina Openysheva (Swimming), and Auriane Viola (Track and Field).  You may have guessed the common thread here, these are all examples of UofL student athletes that have achieved this honor while dealing with English not being their primary language.  I only picked a few examples as a sample, there are quite a few more, but I think this deserves an extra round of applause.

Congratulations to all of the athletes that made this list, and for helping to set a record for the most number of athletes to make the list in UofL's history with the ACC.