NORFOLK, Va. – Old Dominion University's student-athletes closed out 2022 with their most successful fall semester ever in the classroom.
The 466 student athletes who compete for ODU's 18 programs set a school record for overall grade point average in a fall semester with a composite 3.28.
The composite GPA is generally better in the spring than it is during the fall in part because so many athletes, including ODU's more than 100 football players, are in season and thus have less spare time to study.
When Dr. Ron Moses, the executive senior associate athletics director who heads the university's academic counseling efforts for athletics, arrived at ODU in 2019, the composite fall GPA was 2.9.
"We've seen a major improvement in how our student athletes are performing in the classroom. This was far and away the best fall we've ever had," Moses said.
"You have more athletes playing in the fall. It's a more difficult time for our student athletes to excel."
Eight one percent of ODU's student athletes had a 3.0 GPA or better, a 13 percent increase over 2021-22, and another 191 made the Dean's List (3.4 or over). And 61 students, a whopping 13 precent of all ODU athletes, had a perfect 4.0.
In all, 17 of ODU's 18 athletic teams had a GPA of 3.0 or better.
Amy Lynch working with basketball player Jason Wade
Moses said that what makes this performance so remarkable is that students have experienced difficult times and radical changes in recent years. The pandemic shuttered all athletics for much of 2020-21 and the transfer portal has changed the nature of many teams – men's basketball, for instance, has seven newcomers this winter.
"I was expecting a bit of an academic drop, but our students decided to give us another record semester," Moses said. "At some point, it's going to plateau. But so far it hasn't.
"A lot of our students felt like they were robbed of a year of college. They all sacrificed a lot. They've experienced so much change in such a short time.
"They've had to be resilient."
Athletes have more time constraints than do most typical students because of practice, travel and games. NCAA rules limit how many hours coaches athletes can train in season, but the training occurs almost year-around.
Class time, exams and homework don't stop when you're on a road trip.
"Our coaches recruit the right kids academically," said Dr. Wood Selig, ODU's director of athletics.
"And they enforce a culture of lofty academic success equal to if not greater than their athletic success. It's not easy to be a student-athlete and excel on the fields of play and in the classroom. Our athletes have really worked hard in order to achieve both."
ODU has also invested considerable resources into its academic counseling.
ODU's Academic Support Team
ODU's Academics and Student-Athlete Support Services has eight full-time academic counselors who work directly with athletes. They advise students on what classes to take, hold study halls, communicate with faculty members and stay in touch with athletes, some on a daily basis, to monitor their academic progress.
"Our advisors spend as much time with our athletes as do some coaches and athletic trainers," Moses said. "We try to reach the students where they are and try to get them where they need to be."
Head baseball coach Chris Finwood, whose program set a record with a 3.27 GPA, said his team excels because of academic advisor Amy Lynch, director of student athlete services.
"Amy is as big a part of our program as anyone," Finwood said. "She is into this for all the right reasons. She has a servant's heart. She cares about these boys so much. They don't want to let her down."
ODU also employs five graduate assistants and for the first time in school history, a full-time mental health counselor.
Moses said that ODU benefitted from new perspectives from three newcomers to the staff –
academic advisor Tahj Scott, who came from Hampton University; Farrah Young, who was at Southern Illinois Edwardsville and Senior Associate AD for Compliance Danielle Cohea, a Monarch alum who spent the previous 14 years at Cleveland State.
"They brought fresh ideas and a fresh perspective," Moses said.
As is the case nationally, female student athletes generally fared better academically than males. Female athletes had an average GPA of 3.5; male athletes had a 3.13.
Volleyball had the best women's GPA at 3.72 while at 3.41 tennis had the highest GPA among men's sports teams.
Lacrosse (3.62), field hockey (3.5) and football (3.0) all had record GPAs for the fall semester.
Because so many football players come from challenging socio-economic backgrounds, and because there are more than 100 members on the team, college football teams generally lag behind other sports teams academically. But since he was named head coach in 2019, Ricky Rahne's football program has made continual academic progress.
In addition to their high performance academically, athletes continued to donate thousands of hours of their time to community service, from feeding the homeless in Norfolk to serving meals to firefighters on the anniversary of 9/11.
ODU students volunteered 2,669 hours, 150 more than they volunteered in the fall of 2021. ODU athletes averaged nearly six hours of volunteer work during the fall.
Academics and Student-Athlete Support Services
Dr. Sonja Lund, Associate Athletics Director
Eric Cousins, Assistant Athletics Director
Amy Lynch, Director of Student-Athlete Services and Community Engagement
Sarah Walker, Director of Athletics Academic Advising
Tahj Scott, Student-Athlete Development Director
Morgan Sumner, Associate Director of Academic Strategy
Rachel Nelson, Athletics Academic Advisor
Farrah Young, Athletics Academic Advisor
Aytisia Hariston Student-Athlete, Welfare/Diversity Assistant
Demel Bolden, Digital Storyteller and Marketing Coordinator
Caroline Helmer, Graduate Assistant
Gillian Gregory, Graduate Assistant
Noah Jacks-Waters, Graduate Assistant
Sierra Fraser, Student-Athlete Academics Services Intern
Danielle Cohea, Senior Associate AD, Compliance
Malcolm Byrd-White, Director of Compliance
Contact Minium at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
ODU Student Athletes Closed Out 2022 With Their Best Fall Semester Academic Performance Ever
