Gymnast Rachel Terry Earns NCAA Elite 88 Award
4/14/2011 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
April 14, 2011
CLEVELAND - For the second year in a row, an Alabama gymnast has earned the NCAA's Elite 88 Award, which is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average participating at the final site for each of the NCAA's 88 championships.
Junior All-American Rachel Terry, who carries a perfect 4.0 GPA for her career, was announced as the 2011 winner during the NCAA Championship Banquet, held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, Thursday night.
"I'm very proud of Rachel and what she's been able to accomplish, both in the gym as a vault All-American and in the classroom as evidenced by this latest honor," UA head coach Sarah Patterson said. "This is such a tremendous accomplishment when you consider how many young women are here this weekend and that all of them work extremely hard in the classroom. For Rachel to have the highest GPA of everyone here is quite something."
Terry follows in the footsteps of 2010 senior Kassi Price, who earned the inaugural Elite 88 last season with a 4.0 GPA of her own.
"It says a great deal about our program to have one of our ladies earn the Elite 88 Award in each of its first two years of its existence," Patterson said. "I think it speaks to the level of excellence that all of our ladies aspire to in all aspects of the collegiate experience."
A native of Hoover, Ala., Terry is majoring in early childhood education. She is a two-year Scholastic All-American and has been inducted into Alpha Lambda Delta, Kappa Delta Epsilon and Phi Eta Sigma honor societies and earned the College of Human Environmental Science's Phi Upsilon Omicron Award.
Terry is the fourth Alabama student-athlete to garner the award over the last two years, joining Price and golfer Brooke Pancake who took home the trophy last year and cross country runner Nathan Corder who earned Elite 88 this fall.
Eligible student-athletes are sophomores or above who have participated in their sport for at least two years with their school. They must be an active member of the team, traveling and a designated member of the squad size at the championship. All ties are broken by the number of credits completed.
Terry and her teammates start competition at the NCAA Championships on Friday at 6 p.m. EDT in the Wolstein Center on the Cleveland State campus.
