East Michigan News

The Eastern Michigan University baseball team has been recognized with the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Team Academic Award. The announcement was made on Wednesday, July 23, acknowledging the team's academic achievement during the 2024-25 athletics season.

The team achieved a cumulative GPA of 3.471, surpassing the minimum requirement of 3.00 to qualify for the award. To be eligible for this honor, teams must meet several criteria, including being a high school or college team, having a head coach who is an ABCA member, and maintaining a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale.

This recognition highlights the strong academic performance of the Eastern Michigan Eagles in the 2024-25 season. Five players—Drew Norris, Logan Hugo, Tyler Kapa, Brendan Kleiman, and Drew Beckner—were previously named Academic All-District by College Sports Communicators on June 3. These athletes maintained GPAs above 3.50 while participating in at least 90% of their games.

Further honors were awarded to Beckner, Hugo, and Kleiman as they earned Academic All-MAC distinction on June 16 by achieving GPAs above 3.20 while playing in over half of their games. They were joined by teammates Bobby Jones, Cooper Vance, Dom Anderson, and Giano Zuccaro.

The EMU baseball program recorded the highest GPA among EMU men's programs during both fall and winter semesters with scores of 3.514 and 3.470 respectively.

In total, 440 college programs and nearly 300 high school programs received recognition for academic excellence from ABCA this year.