Corey Gaconi named Southland Student-Athlete of theYear

FRISCO, Texas – Southeastern Louisiana senior pitcher Corey Gaconi is the 2019 Southland Conference Baseball Student-Athlete of the Year, the league announced Tuesday along with the all-academic teams. All yearly league awards are presented by Ready Nutrition.

The Metairie, La., native picks up his third consecutive academic all-conference honor. Boasting a 3.93 GPA in marketing, Gaconi became the third Lion in program history to be named CoSIDA Academic All-America, earning third-team honors in 2019. He graduated last month with the highest GPA of any male student-athlete at Southeastern Louisiana.

The 2019 Southland Conference Pitcher of the Year, Gaconi went 7-3 with a 2.57 ERA, 95 strikeouts and just 11 walks in 108.2 innings. The senior finished fourth nationally in strikeout-to-walk ratio (8.64). In regular-season conference starts, he was undefeated (6-0) with a league-low 1.82 ERA and 63 punchouts, opposite of seven walks.

Southeastern Louisiana and Incarnate Word lead the way with five total selections each, followed by Nicholls, Sam Houston State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi with a pair each. McNeese, New Orleans and Abilene Christian each have one honoree. UIW’s four first-team members are the most by any school.

Joining Gaconi as repeat academic all-conference selections are teammate Bryce Tassin, SHSU’s Hayden Wesneski and Nick Mikolajchak, A&M-Corpus Christi’s Itchy Burts and ACU’s Dalon Farkas, who are all receiving their second nod.

Gaconi was one of five CoSIDA Academic All-District selections, along with fellow Lion Kyle Schimpf, UIW’s Tyler Miller, McNeese’s Bryan King and Nicholls’ Dane Simon. Miller, King and A&M-Corpus Christi’s Luke Marbach all posted perfect 4.0 GPAs, and King was the recipient of the conference’s F.L. McDonald Postgraduate Scholarship.

Southland All-Academic teams are voted on by the head coach, sports information director and academic staff member from each member school. Student-athletes must possess a minimum 3.00 cumulative GPA, have completed one full academic year at the nominating institution and participated in at least 50 percent of the team’s competition (excluding pitchers) to qualify. Nominees who were first team all-conference or Google Cloud Academic All-District selections are automatically named Southland All-Academic.

The Southland Conference awards committee, which consists of one administrator from each of the 13 member schools, votes for the Student-Athlete of the Year. Student-Athlete of the Year candidates must have earned at least a 3.20 GPA and demonstrated athletics achievement for at least two years at the nominating institution.

2019 Southland Conference Baseball Student-Athlete of the Year: Corey Gaconi, Southeastern Louisiana

2019 Southland Conference Baseball All-Academic First Team

2019 Southland Conference Baseball All-Academic Second Team

* First Team All-Conference

² Two-time all-academic selection

^{^} Google Cloud Academic All-District

^$ Google Cloud Academic All-American