Baker-Barnes, Jackson, Armour earn GCAC’s highest honors in their respective fields

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Commissioner Dr. Kiki Baker-Barnes, Joshua Jackson and Mark Armour were voted as the GCAC’s Athletic Director, Sports Information Director and Athletic Trainer of the Year by their peers last week.

Dr. Baker-Barnes will be taking home her fourth GCAC Athletic Director of the Year award and her first since the 2014-15 athletic calendar. The GCAC’s Interim Commissioner and Dillard University Athletic Director oversaw all of the conference championship events while making sure they ran smoothly which was no easy task amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She successfully was able to juggle both of her responsibilities in the conference to go along with her duties as a devoted mother and wife.

Jackson adds his second consecutive GCAC SID of the Year honor in only his third season in the Sports Information role at Edward Waters College. The Jacksonville native was pivotal in EWC’s successful hosting of both the GCAC Basketball Tournament in February as well as the Track & Field Championships held down the road at nearby University of North Florida. On the court/field, the Orange and Purple finished third in the Thomas Howell Cup rankings while earning a berth in the Inaugural Black College World Series in baseball which took place in Montgomery, Alabama.

Armour is now 2-for-2 after completing his second campaign as Dillard’s Head Athletic Trainer, winning the GCAC Athletic Trainer of the Year accolade for the second time in two seasons at DU. He is one of the innovators in his field and was part of several task forces to figure out the best way to have athletic seasons in the time of COVID-19.

Individually, Armour works with the sports of men’s basketball and volleyball but had the added responsibility of handling the remaining five sports that the school offers until a second athletic trainer was hired in October of 2020. In that time, besides handling all the sports at Dillard, he also worked as a member of the Ochsner Health System at the hospital daily during the spring and summer of 2020 to help out during the worst of the pandemic. He also conducted an interview during the late summer of 2020 for the WWL-TV to talk about the best practices to get high school athletes back out on the field after a long forced layout due to COVID-19.