FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- The Fairmont State University baseball team received the Team Academic Excellence Award from the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) after totaling a 3.26 team grade-point average during the 2019-20 academic year. The Falcons were one of over 400 programs from all levels of high school and collegiate baseball to be honored by the ABCA for their work in the classroom.
 
Head Coach Phil Caruso's Falcon baseball team boasted 27 student-athletes that recorded a GPA of 3.0 or higher during the spring 2020 semester. That number includes four players that finished the spring semester with a perfect 4.0 GPA. On the field, the Falcons had a 7-9 record early in the season before the COVID-19 pandemic ended the campaign pre-maturely.

Caruso's team has been honored for Academic Excellence by the ABCA in each of the last three seasons as the team has recorded a team GPA of 3.0 or higher during each season (2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20).
 
The American Baseball Coaches Association's Team Academic Excellence Award honors high school and college programs coached by ABCA members that post a grade-point average over 3.00 on a 4.0 scale for the current academic year.
 
Criteria for the ABCA Team Academic Excellence Award include:
- Must be a high school or college team.
- Head coach must be a current ABCA member.
- Team must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 on a 4.0 scale during the 2019-20 academic year. GPA may not be rounded up.

The American Baseball Coaches Association has a long tradition of recognizing the achievements of baseball coaches and student-athletes. The ABCA/Rawlings All-America Teams are the nation's oldest, founded in 1949, and the ABCA's awards program also includes the ABCA/Rawlings All-Region Awards, the ABCA/Diamond Sports Regional & National Coaches of the Year and several other major awards such as the ABCA Hall of Fame and Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award.