Eastern captures cup, claims conference
Eastern won its third Commissioner’s Cup since the Ohio Valley Conference changed the format of the competition five years ago.
Eastern will officially receive the award on May 31 at the conference awards night in Nashville, Tenn.
In the other two years, Eastern finished second place.
The Commissioner’s Cup is an aggregate contest between all OVC athletic departments. Schools receive points based on their sports team’s finishing position in conference play.
The OVC previously awarded two trophies: one for men’s sports and one for women’s sports.
Before the OVC board combined the competition, the Eastern men had won three cups and the women won once, back in the 2001-2002 school year.
In 2008, the conference board moved to combine the contest into one competition in order to base the contest on the collective effort of the athletic department.
Assistant Athletic Director Richard Moser said the Cup is always a priority for the department.
“You pride yourself on how well you’re competing with your peers in your conference,” Moser said. “This shows our department overall that we were the best in terms of putting teams on the field for competition.”
Eastern beat out last year’s Cup champions, Eastern Kentucky, by three points.
Moser said the Cup is one of the more coveted prizes among OVC athletic departments.
“I think it is a goal for every department and every school in the conference to try to win the Commissioner’s Cup,” Moser said.
The Cup is scored in a way that makes the efforts of the sports equal in number and gender.
There are four main areas of competition: football, volleyball, men’s basketball and women’s basketball.
These are the OVC sports that the NCAA allots the highest number of scholarships for men and women.
The eight remaining slots in the competition are filled by each individual university’s eight best sports teams, excluding the aforementioned sports.
Schools receive 12 points for finishing first in conference, 11 points for second, etc.
Eastern won six OVC championships this year in football, men’s indoor track and field, men’s outdoor track, women’s outdoor track, softball and women’s basketball.
Those titles account for 72 of Eastern’s collective 124 accumulated points.
In addition to championships, Eastern captured a second-place finish and two third-place finishes.
Moser even went as far as to say that Eastern puts individual sports under scrutiny in instances where a team’s failure to succeed keeps the department from claiming the title.
“If we’re not successful in our conference in a particular sport, then that’s something that the administration will look at and investigate,” Moser said.
Michael Spencer can be
reached at 581-2812
