Norman, Okla. – With a 3.57 combined grade-point average in 2023-24 and a roster highlighted by the Atlantic Coast Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year and three Academic All-Americans, Georgia Tech’s golf team was honored by the Golf Coaches Association of America Tuesday with a GCAA Outstanding Team Academic Award.
A total of 240 team across NCAA Divisions I, II and III, NAIA, NJCAA Divisions I and II and HBCU were honored, qualifying with team GPA’s of 3.5 or higher, including 59 from NCAA Division I.
Ten of Tech’s 11 golfers posted GPA’s of 3.0 or better for the 2023-24 academic year to contribute to this honor. Tech and Vanderbilt are the only two of the eight NCAA Match Play participants to be honored.
“I’m thrilled, and I salute all the members of our team for receiving this honor,” said head coach Bruce Heppler, who has coached the Jackets for 29 years. “The last year and a half, our academic performance has been the best we’ve had. Our guys all work as hard in the classroom as they do with their golf, and it’s important to them.”
Christo Lamprecht, a senior from George, South Africa; Hiroshi Tai, a sophomore from Singapore, and Bartley Forrester, a graduate senior from Gainesville, Ga., were named All-America Scholars by the GCAA, which requires a 3.2 cumulative GPA, while Lamprecht and Tai were named Academic All-Americans by the Collegiate Sports Communicators, which requires a 3.5 GPA.
Further, Lamprecht was named ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year for golf, and six members of the team made the ACC’s All-Academic Golf Team, which requires a minimum 3.0 GPA for the spring and for the full 2023-24 academic year. Along with Lamprecht, Forrester and Tai, freshmen Kale Fontenot (Lafayette, La.) and Carson Kim (Yorba Linda, Calif.) and sophomore Aidan Tran (Fresno, Calif.) made the ACC team.
Earlier in the spring, Tech’s golf team was honored by the NCAA for having a perfect 1,000 multi-year Academic Progress Report score. Tech golf has had a perfect APR score of 1,000 each of the 20 years since the metric was introduced.
On the golf course, the Yellow Jackets advanced to match play at the NCAA Championship for the second consecutive year, reaching the semifinals, and was ranked No. 17 at the end of the spring in the Scoreboard NCAA rankings. Lamprecht and Tai, who won the NCAA Championship, were named first-team All-Americans.
