{"id":55738,"date":"2020-06-22T10:23:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=55738"},"modified":"2020-06-22T10:23:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:23:44","slug":"brandon-ball-names-cosida-academic-all-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=55738","title":{"rendered":"Brandon Ball names CoSIDA Academic All-American"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CoSIDA released its Academic All-America Team for At-Large Sports on Thursday (June 18). Fort Hays State senior Brandon Ball<\/em><\/a> added yet another major honor to his collection, named to the First Team for 2019-20 after receiving Second Team honors the previous year. Ball is one of just 45 student-athletes nationally in NCAA Division II recognized on the At-Large Team, which combines the sports of wrestling, fencing, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, rifle, skiing, swimming, tennis, volleyball, and water polo. He is one of 17 first-team selections, and just one of three from the sport of wrestling named to the first team.

He is the first student-athlete in the history of the Fort Hays State wrestling program to be named an Academic All-America by CoSIDA more than once.

Ball is a Technology Studies major at Fort Hays State. He carried a 3.81 cumulative GPA into the spring semester. CoSIDA Academic All-District and All-America honors are based on both a student-athlete’s athletic and academic accomplishments.

Ball was a men’s finalist for the MIAA Ken B. Jones Award as a junior in 2019. With the spring sports season in 2020 canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MIAA created Fall and Winter Student-Athletes of the Year in 2020 as a temporary replacement for the Ken B. Jones Award. Ball was a finalist for the Winter Student-Athlete of the Year award.

Ball was one of the top wrestlers in NCAA Division II throughout his career. He earned All-America honors for the third time in his career in 2020 by finishing 16-1 overall. After a fourth-place national finish in 2019, Ball was poised to make a run at the individual national title once again. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Wrestling Championships. With no championship event to determine All-America performers this year, the NWCA voted on All-America honors for 2020. Ball held at No. 2 ranking at 141 pounds for the majority of the season.

Ball wrapped his storied FHSU career as the program’s leader win percentage all time, posting a staggering 130-22 overall record (.855). He was very successful in the classroom as well, earning the MIAA Scholar-Athlete Award and NWCA All-Academic Award four times, while gracing the MIAA Academic Honor Roll five times. Though this award is for Ball’s accomplishments as a member of the wrestling team, he also competed as a pole vaulter for the FHSU Track and Field team.

Ball is a four-time member of the NWCA Division II All-Academic Team. He is the third Academic All-America selection for FHSU in 2019-20, joining Moritz Walther (men’s soccer) and Darby Hirsch (women’s soccer).

2020 CoSIDA Division II Academic All-America Team for At-Large Sports<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION CoSIDA released its Academic All-America Team for At-Large Sports on Thursday (June 18). Fort Hays State senior Brandon Ball added yet… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7349,784],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","category-wrestling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55739,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55738\/revisions\/55739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}