Friday, June 1, 2012

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.



By Ed Cassiere, Sports Information Director

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