STANDISH, Maine – The 2017 Saint Joseph's College baseball team has received high academic honors from the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). The Monks have earned a Team Academic Excellence Award, an honor bestowed upon college and high school programs that posted a GPA over 3.0 on a 4.0 scale during the 2016-17 academic year.

Buoyed by 17 GNAC Academic All-Conference honorees, Saint Joseph's registered a 3.25 team GPA during the 2016-17 academic year as the baseball team captured the athletic department's annual Male Team GPA award for the third time in the last 10 years.

Senior infielder Taylor Black (Cardiff by the Sea, Calif.), the 2017 GNAC Player of the Year, set the tone on the field and in the classroom and, in late May, became the first Saint Joseph's athlete to garner First Team Academic All-America® honors. Black, an Exercise Science major, and classmate Jameson Collins (Sandown, N.H.) also collected CoSIDA Academic All-District™ honors earlier in the month.

Led by 25th-year Head Coach Will Sanborn '86, Saint Joseph's posted a 31-8 overall record with a 13-1 mark in Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) play last spring en route to claiming the conference regular season title for the third-consecutive season. Featuring one of the top offenses in the country, the Monks were ranked nationally essentially all spring and peaked with the #16 slot in the D3Baseball.com/NCBWA Poll on May 3rd.

St. Joe's closed out the 2017 campaign as the NCAA DIII leader in on-base percentage (.440) and ranked second nationally in batting average (.350), third in scoring (9.3 runs per game), and eighth in both winning percentage (.795) and slugging (.506).

Saint Joseph's is one of just six New England Region programs to earn the high academic honor, as the Monks join Endicott College, Salve Regina University, Southern Vermont College, Suffolk University, and Tufts University on the short list.

In total, 221 programs were recognized with the 2016-17 ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award, including 70 high school programs and 60 teams from NCAA Div. III.

Coaches were able to nominate their teams for the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award following the conclusion of their spring semesters prior to the nomination deadline of July 7. To be honored, teams had to meet the following criteria:

• Must be a high school or college team.
• Head coach must be a current ABCA member.
• Team must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale during the 2016-17 academic year. GPA may not be rounded up.

CLICK HERE to view the entire team list

The American Baseball Coaches Association has a long tradition of recognizing the achievements of baseball coaches and student-athletes. The ABCA/Rawlings All-America Teams are the nation's oldest, founded in 1949, and the ABCA's awards program also includes the ABCA/Rawlings All-Region Awards, the ABCA/Diamond Regional & National Coaches of the Year and several other major awards such as the ABCA Hall of Fame and the Ethics in Coaching Award.

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Saint Joseph's College is Maine's only Catholic liberal arts college, providing a supportive, personalized and career-focused education for more than 100 years. From its 474-acre campus on the shores of Sebago Lake, the College offers more than 40 undergraduate programs to a population of approximately 1,000 students. Saint Joseph's College Online provides certificates, undergraduate and advanced degrees for working adults through an online learning program. For more, visit www.sjcme.edu.