NDSU Wrestling Owns Nation’s 11th-Best GPA

The National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) has announced its annual Division I All-Academic Top 30 Teams for the 2012-13 wrestling season, and the North Dakota State wrestling program has posted the 11th-best team grade point average in the country for the second consecutive year.

The Bison registered a 3.129 team cumulative GPA using a system that includes 12 student-athletes from each program, 10 of which come from the wrestlers that were entries in the NCAA tournament conference qualifier. This is the third straight year that NDSU has appeared on the NWCA All-Academic Top 30 list.

“We’ve made it clear that academics are a priority at North Dakota State. They come first and foremost in our program,” said NDSU head wrestling coach Roger Kish. “Our guys have shown once again that they take their academics very seriously, and they’ve been able to perform at a very high level.”

NDSU is one of only seven schools to appear in the top 15 of the NWCA All-Academic list in both 2012 and 2013. Only Penn State, Nebraska, Virginia and Lehigh finished ahead of the Bison at the 2013 NCAA Championships and on the GPA charts.

Senior 125-pound All-American Trent Sprenkle and sophomore heavyweight Evan Knutson were named to the 82-man NWCA Individual All-Academic Team. Sprenkle received the individual honor for the third time in his career, while Knutson was recognized for the first time after making his first NCAA Championships appearance in 2013.

Knutson’s 3.755 cumulative GPA ranked him fifth among all NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships qualifiers in 2013.

NWCA All-Academic Team Top 30

1. Harvard University, 3.418

2. University of Nebraska, 3.321

3. Stanford University, 3.252

4. Indiana University, 3.241

5. University of Virginia, 3.239

6. Brown University, 3.23

6. Lehigh University, 3.23

8. Old Dominion University, 3.155

9. Duke University, 3.154

10. Penn State University, 3.15

11. North Dakota State University, 3.129

12. The Citadel, 3.127

13. South Dakota State University, 3.116

14. George Mason University, 3.109

15. Ohio University, 3.099

16. Utah Valley University, 3.09

17. Michigan State University, 3.087

18. Princeton University, 3.086

19. Davidson College, 3.077

20. Northwestern, 3.073

21. Oklahoma State University, 3.071

22. CSU Bakersfield, 3.07

23. University of Minnesota, 3.069

24. Boise State University, 3.037

25. University of Wyoming, 3.034

26. Appalachian State University, 3.03

27. American University, 3.022

28. Columbia University, 3.021

29. Gardner-Webb, 3.011

30. Purdue University, 3.01