NCAA DI Cross Country Individual Academic Awards – 2016

NEW ORLEANS — Brains and brawn.

Stanford’s Grant Fisher and Missouri’s Karissa Schweizer have both in spades.

That’s why Fisher and Schweizer, the 2016 NCAA XC individual champion, were honored on Thursday as the NCAA Division I Scholar Athletes of the Year for the 2016 cross country season by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).

USTFCCCA Men’s All-Academic | USTFCCCA Women’s All-Academic

This is the 5th time the Cardinal has received this award and marks the second time the program has gone back to back. Sean McGorty won it last year and Chris Derrick won the award in 2010 and 2011.

Schweizer is the first athlete from the Southeastern Conference to earn the distinction.

In order to qualify for the honor, athletes must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.25 and finish in the top-25 (or 10 percent) at regionals or as an All-American at the national meet.

In total, there were 265 athletes named USTFCCCA All-Academic with a lion’s share of them women (168).

Twenty-six athletes held perfect 4.0 GPAs compared to 24 last year. Of those 26 athletes, 21 were women compared to five men. In fact, Arkansas and Colorado each had two women earn perfect GPAs during the 2016 XC season.

Fisher put together an impressive resume during his second collegiate XC season.

The undeclared sophomore with a 3.43 GPA finished in the top-5 at both the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational and the Pac-12 Championships, but it’s what he did at NCAAs that stood out from the rest of the pack.

Fisher finished 5th and was the highest placing sophomore in the field (Northern Arizona’s Tyler Day took 23rd overall). Behind Fisher’s lead, Stanford’s men finished 2nd as a team behind the champion Lumberjacks.

Schweizer might have entered the 2016 XC season as an unknown, but by the end of it she put everyone on notice.

The junior, with a 3.33 GPA in Health Sciences, won four races — yet none were more important than the victory she claimed on a blustery, November day in Terre Haute, Indiana. Schweizer put down a ferocious kick to capture the individual title over Michigan’s Erin Finn.

Schweizer is the 7th woman in the past 8 years — 4th in a row — to win an NCAA XC title and be named Scholar Athlete of the Year.

The full list of student-athletes honored by the USTFCCCA can be found below.

2016 DIVISION I MEN’S ALL-ACADEMIC INDIVIDUALS

2016 DIVISION I WOMEN’S ALL-ACADEMIC INDIVIDUALS