By Nicholas Huenefeld/OCCAC Sports Information
Owens Community College has been named the 2015-16 OCCAC All-Sports Award winner, and it is the college's fourth win in the past five years.
Cincinnati State, which won the crown in 2013-14, finished second for the second consecutive year. In fact, Owens and Cincinnati State have finished first and second in some combination for each of the past eight years. Each college has captured first place four times during that stretch.
The award is tallied by awarding points to each school for its place of finish in each respective sport and dividing that total by the number of sports at each respective school. For example, each conference champion gets 10 points, second place gets nine and so on.
Owens, which captured outright championships in women's basketball, softball, men's golf and women's volleyball, won with a conference best average of 9.357 points. They also finished second in the conference in baseball, fourth in men's basketball and second in men's soccer.
Cincinnati State captured the men's soccer championship outright en route to finishing second with an 8.200 point average. They also finished sixth in men's basketball, second in women's basketball, second in men's golf and second in women's volleyball.
Columbus State Community College finished in third place for the second straight year with an average of 7.625. Although they didn't win a conference championship, the Cougars finished second in men's basketball, fourth in women's basketball, third in men's golf and third in women's volleyball.
In fact, the battle for third place was very close in this year's All-Sports Award standings. Just .025 points behind Columbus State was Sinclair Community College, who captured the men's basketball championship, while Cuyahoga Community College was just .017 behind Sinclair. So, a difference in average of .042 separated third through fifth place.
Cuyahoga captured this year's baseball championship.
Lakeland Community College (6.857), Edison Community College (4.625) and Lorain County Community College (3.667) rounded out the top eight.
Clark State Community College, which was a probationary member of the OCCAC this year, will be eligible for the award in 2016-17. Meanwhile, Hocking College will enter the conference as a probationary member in 2016-17 and thus won't be eligible for the award until 2017-18.
Notes
For the full standings from this year's OCCAC All-Sports Award, and the past history of the award, visit here