Mead, Pieri make Capital One Academic All-District team

JAVON MEAD

MATT PIERI

NEW ORLEANS — Xavier University of Louisiana's Javon Mead and Matt Pieri have been chosen to the Capital One Academic All-District 4 college division men's track and field/cross country team. The College Sports Information Directors of America selected the five-member team.

Xavier has produced six Academic All-District athletes, all in the past four seasons.

Mead, a sophomore from Baton Rouge, La., and a graduate of Baton Rouge Magnet High School, is an accounting major at Xavier with a 3.66 grade-point average. Mead is a two-time All-Gulf Coast Athletic Conference cross country runner who finished third in the conference meet in 2010 and fifth in 2011. He has four top-10 finishes and two top-5s in two years.

Pieri, a junior from New Orleans and a graduate of Brother Martin High School, is a pharmacy major with a 3.79 GPA. Pieri is a three-time All-GCAC runner and was the league's 2010 individual champion. He was a 2011 Daktronics Scholar-Athlete and was inducted into the Chi Alpha Sigma National College Athlete Honor Society. Pieri has won a GCAC career-record 10 Runner of the Week awards, four this past season. He has 13 top-10 finishes and nine top-5s in three seasons.

District 4 in the college division comprises athletes in Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. Xavier and Morehouse (District 5 of NCAA Division II) were the only HBCUs to be represented on the any of the Academic All-District men's track/cross country teams this year. Nominees must be a starter or important reserve with at least a 3.30 cumulative GPA on a 4.0 scale. They also must have completed at least one full calendar year at their current institution and reached sophomore athletic eligibility. First-team Academic All-District members advance to the Academic All-America® ballot.

Xavier's previous Academic All-District honorees were Kelechi Okoroha in men's basketball, Joe Drexler-Dreis in men's track/cross country and tennis player Terry Richardson (at-large) in 2008-09 and Brianna Dekine in women's track/cross country in 2010-11.

Xavier is a six-time defending GCAC team champion in men's and women's cross country. Both squads qualified for the NAIA National Championships three of the past four seasons, including 2011.

Academic All-District teams  (PDF file)

By Ed Cassiere, Sports Information Director

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