The Hope College baseball team is part of an elite group to claim the American Baseball Coaches Association Team Academic Excellence honors for the 2017-18 school year.

To be honored, teams met the following criteria:

  • Must be a high school or college team.
  • Head coach must be a current ABCA member.
  • Must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale during the 2017-18 academic year.

Hope coach Stu Fritz said he is proud of his student-athletes for achieving this recognition.

“We follow the Hope model in being students first, and it’s great to see their hard work pay off in the classroom and their future careers,” Fritz said. “We are lucky at Hope to have so much support across campus of our athletes.”

The Flying Dutchmen are among 79 NCAA Division III teams to earn the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award.

A record total of 294 college and high school teams were recognized by the ABCA.

"We are thrilled to be able to honor all of this year's Team Academic Excellence Award recipients," said ABCA Executive Director Craig Keilitz. "It is a privilege for our association to have the opportunity to highlight so many deserving teams and recognize all of the hard work they put in off the field throughout the year."