Contact: Clark Teuscher, Sports Information Director, 630-637-5302
All-Academic Teams
All-Academic Individuals
July 26, 2018 - The North Central College men's track and field team has been recognized for its combination of athletic and academic excellence in unprecedented fashion, as the Cardinals have been honored as the NCAA Division III National Scholar Team of the Year for the 2018 indoor and outdoor seasons by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).
North Central also received one of the USTFCCCA's major individual academic awards, as distance runner Dhruvil Patel earned Division III Scholar Athlete of the Year accolades for the indoor campaign. Patel, an accounting major, was a two-time CCIW and Division III national champion in 2018. He won the CCIW indoor title at 3,000 meters before placing first in the 5,000 and fourth in the 3,000 at the indoor national championships. Outdoors, Patel became the seventh man in Division III history to eclipse the 14-minute barrier in the 5,000, finishing in 13:58.27 at the Drake Relays, before winning the CCIW outdoor title in the 5,000 as well. He won the 10,000 at the outdoor national championships and tacked on a fourth-place showing in the 5,000. Patel is the second Cardinal to earn a National Scholar Athlete of the Year Award from the USTFCCCA in track and field, as John Crain '14 won the award indoors in 2014.
North Central accumulated a team grade-point average of 3.10 and finished second at both the indoor and outdoor national championship meets. The Cardinals claimed Scholar Team of the Year honors indoors in 2017 as well, and achieve the distinction outdoors for the first time since the award's institution in 2007. North Central is one of 106 men's Division III teams to qualify for All-Academic Team recognition (minimum team GPA of 3.00), doing so for the fourth consecutive year. The Cardinals are one of six College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) institutions to qualify for team honors, joining Augustana College, Carroll University, Carthage College, Illinois Wesleyan University and Wheaton College.
North Central also had a total of 10 student-athletes honored as All-Academic Individuals. this season. To qualify for the individual All-Academic award, student-athletes must have compiled a grade point average of 3.30 and have competed at either the NCAA Indoor or Outdoor Championships or finish the season ranked in the national top 35 in an individual event or the top 25 in a relay event.
The Cardinals' total of 10 honorees ranks as the fourth-highest number of recipients from any NCAA Division III institution. A total of 408 student-athletes from 121 institutions made the list, including 23 from the CCIW.
North Central has a trio of three-time honorees in distance runner Zach Hird, sprinter/hurdler Peyton Piron and high jumper Adam Poklop, while Patel, thrower Caleb Lundquist and distance runner Matt Norvell make the list for the second time and distance runners Argeni Bailon, Al Baldonado and Steve Sismelich and middle-distance runner Brendon Sebastian are first-time honorees.
Hird, an accounting major, earned All-America honors indoors for the second time this year, placing seventh in the distance medley relay, then won a CCIW individual championship outdoors at 1,500 meters before qualifying for the outdoor national championships in the 5,000-meter run, where he placed 12th. Piron, an actuarial science major, claimed CCIW indoor titles in the 400-meter dash and 4-by-400-meter relay, then placed second in the relay and third in the 400 at the indoor national championships. He nabbed a pair of All-America plaques outdoors as well, finishing fourth in the relay and eighth in the 400-meter hurdles, and received North Central's CCIW Jack Swartz Academic All-Conference Award for the spring term. Poklop, who recently graduated as a double major in history and journalism, placed second in the CCIW and 10th in the nation in the high jump indoors.
Lundquist graduated in June with a degree in English with a concentration in writing. He placed first in the javelin throw and second in the discus throw at the CCIW Outdoor Championships, establishing a new North Central record in the javelin with a distance of 201 feet, zero inches. He placed 18th in the javelin at the outdoor national championships. Norvell earned All-America honors indoors with an eighth-place showing in the 5,000. The history and finance double major competed in the 10,000- and 5,000-meter events at outdoor nationals, finishing 11th in the 5,000.
Bailon, a recent graduate with a degree in athletic training, finished fifth at the CCIW indoor championships in the 3,000 and fourth outdoors in the 10,000. He won the CCIW individual title in the 10,000 as a junior. Baldonado, an actuarial science major, finished third in the CCIW indoor 5,000 and qualified for his first national track and field championship outdoors, finishing 17th in the 10,000. Sebastian finished third in the CCIW 800-meter run both indoors and outdoors, and the double major in marketing and finance owned North Central's top time in the event outdoors (1:54.36). Sismelich, a recent graduate with a degree in marketing, placed second in the CCIW indoor 5,000 and outdoor 10,000.
Hird and Norvell were both honored with selections to the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Google Cloud Academic All-America Second Team in June. It was Hird's second straight such recognition.
Combining the twin second-place finishes with the Cardinals' victory at the Division III Cross Country Championships last fall, North Central won the USTFCCCA's Al Carius Program of the Year Award for the 2017-2018 academic year, recognizing the program with the highest average finish at the three championships, for the fourth time.
