| BRENTWOOD — Eastern Kentucky has won the Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner’s Cup for the 2011-12 school year, the league office announced Tuesday.
It marks the first Cup title for the Colonels under the new format, which began four years ago.
The award, a symbol of overall athletic excellence in conference-sponsored championships, will be presented to university officials on June 1 at the league’s annual Honors Brunch in Nashville.
Eastern Kentucky finished the year with 106.5 points, 5.5 more than second-place Eastern Illinois, which won the Cup each of the past two years.
EKU was bolstered by first-place finishes in baseball, football, men’s cross country and women’s tennis and second-place finishes in women’s cross country, women’s soccer and women’s indoor track and field.
Prior to the Commiss-ioner’s Cup being instituted in 2008-09, the Colonels won an OVC record 15 Men’s All-Sport Championships and seven Women’s All-Sport Championships.
Eastern Illinois finished with 101 points, just ahead of Jacksonville State (98), who was 0.25 points ahead of fourth-place Murray State (97.75).
The standings were rounded out by Southeast Missouri (90.75), Morehead State (88), UT Martin (86.5), Austin Peay (84.5), Tennessee Tech (69.5), Tennessee State (66.25) and SIUE (39.5).
SIUE is in its final year of reclassification to Division I. The Cougars played conference schedules but did not compete in conference championships this season, hence the small point total as they did not compete in the cross country, golf, tennis or track and field championships.
The award — started in 1962-63 for men’s sports and 1980-81 for women’s sports — was previously divided into a Men’s All-Sport Champion and a Women’s All-Sport Champion.
Points were awarded for each of the 18 sponsored sports, and each school was required to count its totals from each sport in its grand total.
Under the latest scoring system, schools are required to count point totals for four main sports (football, volleyball, men’s basketball and women’s basketball) along with their next eight highest point totals from the remaining sports, regardless of gender.
Morehead State and SIUE, which do not compete in OVC football, count baseball as one of its four required sports.
The points system for scoring is as follows. For all sports (except rifle, men’s indoor and men’s outdoor track — which have six or fewer participating teams), the first place team earns 11 points, the second place team earns 10 points, etc. For rifle, men’s indoor and men’s outdoor track and field, the first-place team earns 11 points and subsequent point increments are calculated by dividing the total number of OVC member institutions by the number of institutions sponsoring the sport (for rifle that number is 2.75 less, for men’s indoor track that number is 2.25 less and for men’s outdoor track that number is 2.0 less).
New to the scoring system in 2011-12 is a bonus point for the winner of OVC Tournaments (soccer, volleyball, basketball, tennis, softball and baseball). Published in The Messenger 5.30.12 |
