Speight Earns Even More Academic Post-Season Honors
Montene Speight, a Texas Tech senior from St. Louis, Missouri, has been named the Big 12 Track & Field Spring Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
On the track, Speight had a tremendous season, earning Second Team All-American honors in the 400-meter dash and five All-Big 12 honors.
Off the track, Speight has been awarded a slew of academic post-season honors.
She was named a recipient of the NCAA’s Elite 89 Award, an award presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 89 championships.
Speight, a political science major with a 4.0 GPA, has also been honored as First Team All-Big 12 Academic Team honors and was named to the Capital One Academic All-District Team as well.
The Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award is named in each of the Conference’s sponsored sports. Each conference member school nominates one athlete per sport, and the conference’s head coaches, who are not allowed to vote for their school’s candidate, select the winner.
The criteria for the award includes: a cumulative 3.2 GPA, participation in 60 percent of the team’s scheduled competitions and a classification of being either a junior or senior that has been at the school for at least one full year.
Speight is the first Red Raider track and field athlete to be named Scholar-Athlete of the Year.