Each of Western Kentucky University's 19 athletic teams exceeded the NCAA-mandated 900 Academic Progress Rate (APR) score through the 2011-12 academic year by at least 45 points, the NCAA announced Tuesday.
All of WKU's athletic teams have been above the 900 threshold every year since the NCAA began tracking APR, which is a real-time measure of eligibility and retention of student-athletes competing on every Division I sports team. The most recent APR scores are a multi-year average of the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years.
WKU is one of nine Sun Belt Conference schools to be above the 900 figure in all sports in the most recent NCAA release. WKU's volleyball program earned a perfect 1,000 APR score through 2011-12 and is one of eight Sun Belt Conference teams to record a perfect score.
In addition to volleyball, nine other teams at WKU were at or above a 970, and all 19 were at or above a 945.
The Division I Board of Directors set a score of 900 as the threshold for teams to meet or face possible immediate and historical sanctions. Programs falling below the 900 benchmark face penalties such as practice time reduction, scholarship reduction and possible postseason bans. The threshold will increase to 930 in one year.
Following the 2012-13 academic year, the average cumulative grade point average of all WKU student-athletes is 3.05, and 200 students, 53 percent, are maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or better. Eleven of 15 sport programs, 73 percent, have a cumulative team GPA of 3.0 or better, and four are at or above 3.4 as a team. At least one student-athlete from each sport program earned a perfect 4.0 GPA in the spring 2013 semester for a total of 47 student-athletes, and a total of 108 student-athletes graduated in the past calendar year with an average cumulative GPA of 3.27.