KALAMAZOO, Mich. – For the seventh consecutive year, the Western Michigan baseball team has earned the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Team Academic Excellence Award, presented by Sports Attack, for the 2023-24 academic year.
The award recognizes programs coached by ABCA members whose team GPA is 3.0 or higher for the entire 2023-24 academic year.
Head coach
Billy Gernon's squad posted a program-record 3.66 GPA in the fall semester and followed that up with a 3.51 GPA in the spring, extending the program's streak of consecutive semesters with a team GPA of 3.5 or higher to 13 in a row. Across the two semesters, WMU boasted a total of 18 4.0 GPAs. In the fall, 30 Broncos made the Dean's List, with 29 then making the Dean's List in the spring.
Following the season, Western Michigan had 15 Academic All-MAC honorees, tied for the most in the conference.
Hayden Berg,
Greg Budig,
Jake Gernon,
Brendan Harrity,
Matt Hoover,
Jackson Kitchen,
Grady Mee,
Brady Miller,
Dylan Nevar,
Joe Shapiro,
Cade Sullivan,
Luke Thelen,
DJ Thompson,
Nolan Vlcek and
Ryan Watt all earned the honor. Additionally, Budig, Nevar, Sullivan, Thelen and Vlcek were each named College Sports Communicators Academic All-District®.
Earlier this month, Nevar became the first Bronco to be named an Academic All-American since 1995, when he was
voted to the CSC Academic All-America® Second Team.