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This story is part of our April 2022 CoSIDA 360 package, to view more stories,
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District coordinators vital to CoSIDA Academic All-America® program's success
by Kevin Smith – Wooster, Director of Athletic Communications @d_legos_ATU
The Academic All-America® Core Committee is CoSIDA’s largest committee with around 150 members. Nearly two-thirds of the committee is composed of district coordinators, who are the backbone of a program that awards around 1,500 honors at the national level and approximately 4,000 more at the district level on an annual basis. Simply put, CoSIDA’s signature awards program would not be possible without the diligence of the district coordinators who review around 17,000 nominations submitted by all of you each year.
Kevin Smith (left) and assistant Matt Anderson (right) honored their fall Academic All-America® student-athletes at a recent game. Smith has been a district coordinator since 2014.
While those numbers seem daunting, the work of many makes it super manageable. District coordinators have a minimal time commitment of just a few hours a year reviewing nominations (hint, hint for those looking to get more involved with CoSIDA or those starting out in the industry looking for committee service for your résumé).
District coordinators work two of the 12 contests each year with one in the fall, or basketball, and the other in the spring. Each district coordinator is assigned one district and reviews all of the nominations in that district for NCAA Division I and NCAA Division II or NCAA Division III and NAIA for their two contests. Depending on the district and contest, that equates to around 70-225 nominations, twice a year. You have three full days – Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday – to complete the review each time. So just what do district coordinators check for?
- Confirms the gender is correct. Nominations accidentally submitted in the wrong gender happens more often than you think! Please double check your nominations before hitting submit!
- Ever wonder why we ask for the compliance contact on the nomination? Now you know! That person is contacted by the district coordinator for all nominations with a 3.30 GPA to make sure it is really a 3.30 and not rounded up. Plus, on occasion, the compliance contact may be contacted to verify eligibility in the case of transfers.
- Makes sure the GPA is between 3.30 and 4.00.
- Confirms the institution is in the correct district and division.
- There are no duplicate nominations, and you did not accidentally nominate yourself.
- Your nominee has been at your institution for at least one full calendar year, with the exception of graduate transfers who are eligible immediately.
- Further, district coordinators look to see if transfers meet one of the “special” criteria if they have not been at your institution for at least one full calendar year. Those “special” criteria include the institution they transferred from permanently closed or dropped their sport, or they wound up back at your institution after previously transferring out. Please help your district coordinator out and put that on the nomination in the transfer section if your nominee meets one of these “special” criteria.
- Your nominee has played in at least 50 percent of your team’s games as of the time of nomination, or in the case of baseball and softball, has pitched in at least 10 innings if nominated as a pitcher.
- The stats are appropriate for the contest.
- At least two of the five boxes for honors and career highlights have something in them.
After working through all their nominations, district coordinators check in with their national coordinator with a list of nominations they disapproved and any they approved with comment, meaning something minor needs to be adjusted. Approvals with comment are typically something like wrong gender, a 500.00 field-goal shooting percentage in basketball, or 125.5 yards per carry in football. The national coordinator reviews the flagged nominations and has the editing capabilities to make edits. National coordinators, plus the committee chair, vice chair, and operations coordinator are the ones who jump in last-minute – aka Friday evening or squeezing it in around their teams’ games over the weekend – and review submissions in districts that have not been approved by the deadline. Please do not be that district coordinator who forgets or misses the deadline for reviewing!
I am the national coordinator for Division III and NAIA football and men’s at-large sports, so my group of district coordinators has the added duty of checking to make sure no more than four nominations are submitted per institution per gender in the at-large category. Full disclosure, my group of district coordinators is spoiled because I take care of that one for them since I can view a master spreadsheet of nominations. I also check the Division I and Division II lists for institutions like Johns Hopkins University (lacrosse) or Clarkson University (hockey), plus others, with a sport that plays in a different division, as you can only nominate four total from each gender.
If you are interested in joining the committee as a district coordinator for the 2022-2023 academic year, please drop an email to committee chair Kevin Lanke – lanke@rose-hulman.edu. For those currently on the committee, please look for Kevin’s (Lanke) email this summer regarding the next academic year.
P.S. – Baseball and softball are the first spring contests and nominations open April 19. Plan ahead and view the complete spring Academic All-America® program dates here. Also, please make time and vote this spring, even if you are not currently on the committee. As part of your CoSIDA membership, you can vote on your district ballot plus the national ballot for your division, even if you are not on the committee.
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