BATON ROUGE — The Tiger Athletic Foundation hosts its Academic Excellence Gala each year to honor LSU’s student-athletes who pursue excellence both on and off the field, and the recipient of this year’s Tiger Cup for team performance was the LSU soccer team.
Head Coach Brian Lee joined team members Casey Crawford, Mo Isom, Roslyn Jones, Katherine Lagow, Jackie Moseley, Sara Pollock, Chelsea Potts and Rachel Yepez at the LSU Stadium Club on Sunday night to receive the prestigious award from Director of Athletics Joe Alleva.
The winner of the Tiger Cup is determined by combining a team’s final conference and national ranking on the field, along with its cumulative grade-point average and community service hours accumulated during the previous academic year.
Not only did the soccer team finish the 2008 season with a team high No. 2 finish in the overall SEC standings and No. 14 national ranking in the final Soccer Times Top 25 poll, but it also had a 3.0 cumulative team GPA to go along with 857 hours of community service, which ranks No. 1 among all men’s and women’s athletic programs at LSU.
In addition, Crawford, Jones, Lagow, Moseley, Pollock, Potts, Michelle Makasini and Caroline Vanderpool were awarded the LSU Director’s Cup for their performance in the classroom.
“We’re certainly very honored to be the recipient of this year’s Tiger Cup award,” Lee said. “Our philosophy is one of pursuing excellence both on and off the field, and we challenge our players to be the best that they can be from the first day they join our program. They have a great support system that helps them excel on the field, in the classroom and in the community.
“We especially want to commend Carole Walker for the job she does as our academic advisor and Jade Jenkins for coordinating the many community service projects we enjoy.”
The Tigers are fresh off a 2008 season in which they advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row after clinching their second-straight SEC Western Division title. In addition, the team finished with a school record 14-4-2 overall record and 7-3-1 mark in SEC play.