The Irvine Valley College athletics department recognized its top athletes and students last month with a number of awards.
The awards include the Orange Empire Conference Veteran of the Year, OEC Character Champions, Athletics Community Ambassadors, Andy Weekes Team of the Year, Coaches of the Year, Alumnus of the Year, Anna L. McFarlin, Sport-For-All Service Award, Exchange Club of Irvine Scholar-Athletes of the Year, Athletes of the Year and Scholar Team Award.
Ted Weatherford was the athletic department's Veteran of the Year, women's basketball player Natasha Dillon and men's volleyball player Grant Marocchi were the school's OEC Character Champions honorees and women's volleyball player Renata Bath and men's soccer player Grant Joyce were selected as the scholar athletes of the year.
More honors will be listed throughout this week and into next week on the Irvine Valley athletics website.
The Irvine Valley Scholar Team Award for 2017-18 went to the Laser women's tennis team.
The award was established in 2009-10.
IVC's women's tennis team had a 3.55 grade point average. Halla Alajeely, Ariyana Ash, Ashley Le, Brigget Lee and Alaina Spearman each earned a 3.00 or better. Alajeely, Ash, Le and Lee each had at least a 3.75 GPA.
Other sports teams with GPA's over 3.00 included women's beach volleyball at 3.28, baseball at 3.22, women's badminton at 3.21, women's basketball at 3.16 and women's volleyball at 3.08
The program-wide grade point average for Irvine Valley teams was 3.01.
Irvine Valley also featured 103 scholar athletes this past school year spread across its 13 sports, which is an athletics program record.
IVC Scholar-Athlete awards are made to all student-athletes who use a season of eligibility and achieve a 3.0 or better GPA in at least 12 units. First-year student-athletes' (freshmen and transfers) GPAs are calculated on the Fall term grades, while returning student-athletes must achieve the GPA in the previous two full academic terms
The baseball team led the way with 24 total players, including six players that had a 3.75 grade point average or higher. Those players included Adam Auriemma, Kyle Dobson, Brennen Farber, Michael Hascup, Dane Nakatsuka and Matt Wong. Hascup and Wong each hit that mark for the second year in a row.
The women's soccer team and women's beach/indoor volleyball teams each had 11 students honored.
And Irvine Valley had an impressive 14 student athletes earn a 4.0 grade point average. They were women's badminton players Mango Gong, Amanda Peng and Maggie Wu, Farber and Nakatsuka from baseball, women's basketball player Maggie Brown, women's golfer Emily Crowl, women's soccer player Kellian Lorenzen, men's tennis player Derek Lin, Marocchi and Coco Touya from men's volleyball, and Truth Hafey, Lea Kruse and Anna Unke from women's beach and indoor volleyball all
The full list of scholar athletes for Irvine Valley can be viewed here