UMES Finishes in Top 10% of All Women's D-1 Programs

MCLEAN, Virginia -- Capital One Financial Corporation, an official NCAA Corporate Champion announced the final women's standings on June 14th for the Capital One Cup. The award, given to the best men's and women's Division I athletic programs in the country, awards points based on teams' top-10 finishes in NCAA Championships and in the final official coaches' polls across 20 women's sports and 19 men's.

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) finished 32nd out of 346 DI schools with 20 points, to finish in the top 10 percent of all schools on the women's side. This is just the second year of the Capital One Cup.

UMES tied with three other schools, Georgetown, Minnesota and TCU. Stanford won the cup with 152.5 points, UCLA was second with 110. The University of Maryland was tenth with 62 points to finish as the top school in the state while UMES is the only Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) school to record points in the final standings.

The points can be attributed to the success of women's bowling, who not only won back-to-back national championships, but finished first in the final National Tenpins Coaches Association (NTCA) poll.

UMES also has had significant years out of several of their women's programs and are ranked in the top one third of the Learfield Sports' Director's Cup standings, overseen by the National Collegiate Director's of Athletics (NACDA), who measure the success of all the sports sponsored by DI schools.

Bowling scored 100 points for finishing first. Volleyball won the MEAC Championship before falling to eventual champion UCLA in the first round of the tournament (33rd overall, 25 points). Track and Field also was solid as Lenora Guion-Firmin (La Trinite Martinique, France) finished seventh and eighth respectively in the 400m at the Indoor (Team-55th overall, 16.5 points) and Outdoor (Team-63rd overall, 5 points) National Championships.

Those accomplishments had the Hawks ranked 117th with 146.5 points in the latest standings. While the athletic season isn't complete, UMES is poised for their best season ever since the cup started in 1993-94. Previously the Hawks' best three finishes came in 2007 (157th), 2008 (151st) and in 2011 (150th). The final standings will be announced later this month.

COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND EASTERN SHORE SPORTS INFORMATION