By Ryne Rickman, UT Martin Sports Information Director
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – For the eighth consecutive season and ninth time in the last 10 years, the University of Tennessee at Martin has earned the Ohio Valley Conference Team Sportsmanship Award for the sport of men’s golf.
The Skyhawks have now won the OVC Team Sportsmanship Award in every season since 2013-14 (no award was given during the shortened 2019-20 campaign). No other OVC institution has won this award in a single sport more than four years in a row. UT Martin’s nine overall OVC Team Sportsmanship Awards are two more than any other university/sport combination in league history.
Created prior to the 2005-06 academic year, the OVC Team Sportsmanship Award is voted on by the student-athletes and coaches of the respective sports and are bestowed upon the conference squads deemed to have best exhibited the standards of sportsmanship and ethical behavior as outlined by the OVC and NCAA. Included in the areas for evaluation are the conduct of student-athletes, coaches, staff, administrators and fans.
The OVC Team Sportsmanship Award is the most recent addition to an awards program that recognizes and celebrates sportsmanship within the conference. In 1995, the OVC implemented a first-of-its-kind “Sportsmanship Statement”, a policy promoting principles of fair play, ethical conduct and respect for one’s opponent. The statement answered the challenge of the NCAA Presidents Commission to improve sportsmanship in collegiate athletics and has become a model for others to follow across the nation.
There years later, the league established the Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award, presented annually to a male or female athlete of junior or senior status who best exemplifies the characteristics of the late Morehead State student-athlete, coach and administrator. In 2003, the conference added the OVC Institutional Sportsmanship Award, which follows the same criteria as the Team Sportsmanship Award.
“Without sportsmanship there are truly no meaningful victories,” OVC Commissioner Beth DeBauche said. “The recipients of the OVC Team Sportsmanship Awards should accept this award with great pride for their fellow competitors have made it clear their teams exemplify the best in intercollegiate athletics. In receiving this prestigious honor, other competitors are saying these student-athletes compete with class, respect their opponents and value fair play. That is quite a compliment as those are all traits that will lead to true victories throughout the course of life.”
Graphic courtesy of UT Martin Sports Information