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 members of the LSU soccer team were recognized for their performance during Sunday’s festivities at the LSU Stadium Club.
For the second-straight year, the LSU soccer team was honored as the recipient of the Tiger Cup for team performance as presented by Director of Athletics Joe Alleva.
The recipient of the Tiger Cup is determined by combining a team’s final conference and national ranking on the field with its cumulative grade-point average and community service hours accumulated off the field during the previous academic year. The soccer team was also the Tiger Cup recipient in 2009.
Not only did the soccer team finish the 2009 season with a No. 2 finish in the overall SEC standings and a No. 14 national ranking in the final National Soccer Coaches Association of America Top 25 poll, but it also finished the year with nearly a 3.0 team GPA and approximately 700 hours of community service, which ranks No. 1 among all men’s and women’s athletic programs at LSU.
In addition, Courtney Alexander, Casey Crawford, Roslyn Jones, Katherine Lagow, Jackie Moseley, Chelsea Potts and Rachel Yepez were presented the LSU Director’s Cup for their efforts in the classroom.
“We’re certainly honored to receive the Tiger Cup again this year,” said LSU head coach Brian Lee. “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 Katherine Lagow for the job she’s done in planning and organizing our community service projects all year long. She embraced her role as a leader for us this year, and we really owe her a debt of gratitude for what she has meant to this program both on and off the field.”
Sophomore goalkeeper Mo Isom was also honored during the festivities as this year’s recipient of the Eye of the Tiger award. The award is presented annually to the LSU student-athlete who exhibits perseverance and thrives on and off the field while overcoming great adversity.
“There is not a more deserving recipient of this award than Mo Isom,” Lee said. “We’re very proud of Mo for all of the hard work she has put in to not only becoming one of the best goalkeepers in the country on the field, but also one of the best people and best representatives of this university off the field. She has an amazing future ahead of her, and we’re excited about what that future might bring.
“This was another great year for the LSU soccer program and we expect more great things to come during 2010 as we continue our climb as one of the nation’s elite. We look forward to that challenge.”