Rupp named track and field’s Academic All-American of the Year
Blood earns Academic All-America honors for the second straight year.
Galen Rupp, a senior from Portland, Oregon, has been named ESPN the Magazine Academic All-American of the Year for Men’s Track and Field/Cross Country, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America.
Rupp is now one of twelve finalists, including Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Tim Tebow of the University of Florida, on the ballot for the national Division I Academic All-American of the Year.
Rupp joins former Duck quarterback Bill Musgrave, a 1990 graduate, as UO student-athletes to earn their sport’s distinction as a top national academic and athletic performer.
Rupp, who carries a 3.89 grade point average in business administration, won an unprecedented six NCAA distance titles during the 2008–9 academic year. The 2008 Olympian amassed a school-record fourteen All-America awards during his brilliant career. In mid-June at Fayetteville, Arkansas, he won the 5,000 and 10,000 meter titles at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. He became the first competitor to win both races in nine years and the first to ever do it after the NCAA adopted a preliminary round for the 5,000.
Rupp wasn’t the only Duck honored.
The University of Oregon’s Nicole Blood became a two-time Academic All-American as she was named to the national women’s track and field and cross country second team. Blood was a third team selection a year ago. The junior from Saratoga Springs, New York, holds a 3.48 GPA in journalism and finished second in the 5,000 meters at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships to help lead Oregon to a second-place finish, which was the Ducks’ best showing in twenty-four years.