FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 11, 2006

Two from MSSU earn Academic All-District recognition

JOPLIN, Mo. - Two spring sports student-athletes from Missouri Southern State University have been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District VII   teams as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

Baseball junior Michael Meyer (Olathe, Kan.) and softball senior Callie Stanford (Webb City, Mo.) earned second-team honors on the academic squads announced today.

Meyer, a 5-foot-10 pitcher, led the Lion pitching staff in 2006 with four victories and 37 strikeouts in 72.1 innings of work. The right-hander posted five of Missouri Southern's seven complete games this season while making a team-high 12 starts. He also led the Southern starters with a 5.97 earned run average.

In the classroom, Meyer holds a perfect 4.0 grade-point average as an accounting major. He's on track for his second Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll award and his third MIAA Presidential Scholar plaque. This season marks the second straight year for Meyer to earn second-team ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District honors.

Stanford, a pitcher for the MSSU softball team, led the 2006 Lions with a 1.37 ERA and a .231 batting average allowed. She finished 2-3 in nine appearances this season, while balancing student-teaching duties with the softball campaign. The 5-foot-8 right-hander made six starts and logged 30.2 innings of work in 2006. She finished in third place on the Lions career starts list with 75, while ranking fourth in appearances (94) and fifth in strikeouts (205).

Stanford maintains a 3.88 GPA as a secondary education/English major. She will collect her third career MIAA Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll award later this month.

Two more ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District teams will be announced in the near future. The men's and women's at-large team, which includes women's tennis and men's golf, will be released on May 25. The track & field/cross country team will be announced on June 2.

The Academic All-America  Teams program honors 816 male and female student-athletes annually who have succeeded at the highest level on the playing field and in the classroom. Individuals are selected through voting by CoSIDA, a 2,000-member organization consisted of sports public relations professionals for colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

To be eligible, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.20 on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standings at his/her current institution and be nominated by his/her sports information director. Since the program's inception in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America  honors on more than 14,000 student-athletes in Divisions I, II, III and NAIA covering all NCAA championship sports.

College Division District VII includes NCAA Division II and III schools along with NAIA institutions from the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota and all Canadian schools in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

ESPN The Magazine -- winner of the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence -- is a provocative and innovative sports publication. Full of insight, analysis, impact and wit, the oversized bi-weekly with a circulation of 1.85 million looks ahead to give fans a unique perspective on the world of sports.


 

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