Youngstown State University has earned the Horizon League’s McCafferty Trophy for its excellence within the convention’s 19 championship sports activities. YSU Faculty Athletics Representative Dr. Chet Cooper, together with President Dr. Helen Ok. Lafferty, Executive Director of Intercollegiate Ron Strollo, Senior Woman Administrator Rebecca Fink and student-athlete Mady Aulbach, accepted the award on the Horizon League’s annual conferences in Indianapolis on Wednesday.

This is the second time within the final three tutorial years that Youngstown State has earned the league’s all-sports trophy, and it’s the first time that the college has received the distinguished award outright. The Penguins shared the McCafferty Trophy with Oakland in 2020-21, which was the primary award for YSU because it joined the Horizon League in 2001-02.

Bolstered by seven Horizon League championships in 2022-23, Youngstown State earned 51 factors to complete on the prime of the McCafferty Trophy standings. That was 4.5 factors larger than second-place Oakland, and solely 4 colleges had greater than 26 factors. YSU recorded a league-high 27 factors in males’s sports activities, 5.5 greater than second-place Cleveland State, and the Penguins had the second-highest whole in ladies’s sports activities with 24 factors.

“One of our chief goals as a department every year is to win the McCafferty Trophy, and we’re so proud of our student-athletes and coaches for the grit and determination they displayed to achieve this great accomplishment!” mentioned Ron Strollo, YSU’s Executive Director of Intercollegiate Athletics. “The McCafferty Trophy rewards broad-based excellence across all sports, and we could not achieve that without our hard-working staff that supports our student-athletes.”

“Adding in our bowling team’s Elite Eight appearance, our football team making significant strides and our lacrosse team reaching the semifinals of the MAC Tournament, we had tremendous success in every season of competition. To top it off, we had a department-wide GPA of 3.51 in the fall and 3.43 in the spring, and it’s amazing to see our student-athletes excel in the classroom while also competing at such a high level athletically.”

Youngstown State has completed among the many prime two within the McCafferty Trophy standings in every of the previous three seasons. The Penguins received the Men’s All-Sports Award for the primary time in division historical past, and the women and men each positioned within the prime two for the primary time ever. The 51 factors are a faculty file, topping the earlier mark of 45 in 2021-22.

The Penguins had been third within the McCafferty Trophy standings after the autumn season after successful the lads’s cross nation championship, reaching their first ladies’s soccer championship match and inserting third on the League’s ladies’s cross nation meet. An excellent winter that featured a pair of indoor Horizon League Track & Field championships and the lads’s basketball group successful its first Horizon League regular-season crown allowed the Penguins to leap into first. YSU then pulled away within the spring with championships in males’s and ladies’s out of doors monitor & area and ladies’s tennis, and a semifinal look within the males’s tennis convention match.

In males’s sports activities, Youngstown State acquired seven factors in cross nation, basketball and monitor & area, 5 factors in tennis and one in baseball. On the ladies’s aspect, the Penguins acquired seven factors in monitor & area and tennis, three in each cross nation and soccer, and two apiece in basketball and softball.

Named in honor of James J. McCafferty, who served because the convention’s first commissioner from 1979-80, the McCafferty Trophy is awarded yearly by the Horizon League to a member establishment compiling the best variety of efficiency factors, based mostly on its end within the League’s 19 championship sports activities.

For the sports activities of males’s and ladies’s soccer, volleyball, males’s and ladies’s basketball, softball and baseball, factors are awarded based mostly on mixed regular-season (60 %) and championship (40 %) finishes. For all different sports activities, factors are based mostly on efficiency within the League championships.