SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY ATHLETES TAKE ACADEMIC HONORS

The Saint Louis University Billikens put the student back into
student-athlete, again.

Conference USA named SLU as the recipient of the Institutional
Excellence Award for the eighth consecutive year. The award was
given to the Bills after all of the athletes who participated in
school sponsored sports during the past academic year attained a
3.24 cumulative GPA.

The Billikens have won the award every year since the inception
of Conference USA back in 1995.

Along with winning overall honors, the Bills also took home the
prize for the best overall GPA in five individual sports. Those
sports were baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s
soccer and women’s swimming and diving. The women’s soccer team
posted a school high 3.56 GPA last year. The women’s swimming and
diving team accumulated a 3.37, with the baseball team pulling in a
3.13, which was the highest for the conference for the 8th straight
year, like the rest of the school, and the basketball team rounded
out the award winning teams for SLU with a 2.72.

CHARTER TO COVER BILLIKEN SPORTS AGAIN

Charter Communications announced that it will once again
broadcast a few live Billiken games this year. The Charter
Communication Information Network (CCIN) will be the network
designated to air the games, which will include three men’s soccer
games, the first of which will be a pre-season game against Notre
Dame on Aug. 23, one women’s soccer game, Sept. 21, against Tulane
and one women’s volleyball game, Sept. 30, against the University
of Tennessee-Martin.

ARENA WORK CONTINUES

Last spring, Saint Louis University announced plans to build a
13,000 seat arena in midtown. This summer, the plans continued with
the announcement that Alberici Constructors will team with the
sports architectural firm Sink Combs Dethlefs and architectural
firm Mackey Mitchell Associates to design and implement
construction on the arena. Site evaluation is under way, however
the building of the arena is still contingent on raising an
estimated $45 million in private donations, which will bring the
grand total of the project to approximately $70 million.

The arena will serve as a multi-purpose campus center, hosting
everything from major university sporting events to commencement
exercises and conferences. The arena will also host family
concerts, city conventions and other sporting competitions.