IRVING, Texas — UTSA punter Lucas Dean has been named the American Athletic Conference Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the league office announced on Wednesday.
Dean was chosen as the league’s scholar-athlete of the year for the sport of football, one of 23 recipients honored by The American for their academic and athletic performance.
A three-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team selection, Dean posted a 3.87 GPA while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics, and he currently boasts a perfect 4.0 GPA as a graduate student in the MBA program. The Dunsborough, Australia, native earned second-team all-conference accolades last fall after averaging 42.3 yards on 51 punts with 20 that pinned opponents inside their 20-yard line, 11 that sailed 50-plus yards and 25 that resulted in a fair catch.
A semifinalist for the 2023 William V. Campbell Trophy and a member of the National Football Foundation’s Hampshire Honor Society, Dean finished his collegiate career as UTSA’s all-time leader for punts (261), punting average (43.7) and longest punt (76). A member of the 2021 Conference USA All-Academic Team, Dean recorded the top three and four of the top five single-season averages in program annals, including the UTSA standard of 45.98 in 2020, a year in which he was a second-team All-American by the Sporting News and the Conference USA Special Teams Player of the Year. He collected four Conference USA Commissioner’s Academic Medals and made the league’s honor roll four times before the Roadrunners joined the American Athletic Conference in 2023.
Selections for the 23 Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards, as well as the Male and Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year honors, are made by the Academic Committee on the basis of academic credentials and athletic performance. Each conference school may nominate one student-athlete per sport who has achieved senior academic standing as determined by the institution. A winner is chosen from each of the conference’s 21 sponsored sports in addition to at-large selections from sports not sponsored by the conference.
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