For the 2018-19 sports calendar, Longwood University enjoyed a Big South Conference championship in softball, top-three conference finishes in field hockey, women’s lacrosse and women’s soccer, and the first Division I postseason appearance and postseason victory for men’s basketball.

And that’s only half the story, a recent Longwood athletics press release highlighted.

Matching an on-field performance that was collectively the best of Longwood athletics’ 15-year Division I era, Lancer student-athletes also excelled in the classroom in 2018-19 and capped a strong academic year with a record 3.12 cumulative grade point average (GPA) for the spring semester, officials said in the release. That mark is the highest in a spring semester for Longwood student-athletes since the department began tracking such data in the fall of 2008.

The release noted that highlighted by 80 Dean’s List selections, 20 President’s List honorees and 2019 Sally Barksdale Hargrett Prize co-winner Kate Spradlin, Longwood’s student-athletes combined for a GPA of at least 3.00 for the fifth consecutive semester. Their performance in the spring follows a similarly triumphant academic showing this past fall in which the school’s 200-plus student-athletes achieved a department-record 3.14 GPA, the highest in a single term in more than a decade.

“It has been an incredible year for Longwood athletics in many facets, but the academic performance of our student-athletes this season may be the most impressive thing we have accomplished as a department,” Longwood Athletics Director Michelle Meadows said in the release.