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    Senior sprinter Aunye Boone of the women’s track & field team has been named a recipient of the Academic Momentum Award as announced by the Scholar Baller® program, in conjunction with the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS). Boone was one of 49 student-athletes honored from across the nation and was tabbed to the second team.

    Nominations were categorized into three teams based on each student-athlete’s academic improvement and the impact each student-athlete’s academic performance had on his or her classmates, teammates, academic advisors, and professors.

    Boone, an English major from St. Leonard, Md., led the team in the outdoor 400-meter dash this past season, setting a personal best at the Hurricane Invitational (55.23). Indoors, she ran on the school record-setting 4x400-meter relay at the ACC Championships (3:38.16) and was named to the All-ACC and USTFCCCA Academic Teams.

     The NCAS is an ever-growing organization of colleges and universities that provides opportunities for current and former student-athletes to continue their pursuit of higher education, while working in the community with children to address social issues. Established in 1985, the overall mission of the NCAS is “to create a better society by focusing on educational attainment and using the power appeal of sport to positively affect social change.”

     Established in 1995, the Scholar Baller® movement evolved in response to concerns that the student-athlete’s athletics role increasingly superseded the student role. In order to address this issue, the founding members of Scholar Baller developed a groundbreaking program to bridge the gap between education and sport utilizing student-athletes’ passion for entertainment and athletics. As a result, the Scholar Baller program has produced unprecedented outcomes in student retention and academic achievement.

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