As the Mountaineers continue to roll out their 2021 Academic Awards, the Women's Volleyball team has been named the recipient of the 2020-2021 Mountaineer Team Scholastic Award.

The Women's Volleyball team led the way with nine total student-athletes receiving Mountaineer All-Academic honours.

With competitive side taken away from the student-athletes during this academic year, head coach Matthew Schnarr says he's proud of the way his group was able to come together and continue working towards a common goal despite the changes that were thrown their way.

"What I am most proud of is the cliché word 'resilient.' The athletes in this group and across the country are often described as needing to be more resilient, I don't think we can say that anymore," says Schnarr, a former Mountaineer student-athlete himself. "A passion of theirs was taken away and they still managed to create and connect, build community and get it done academically in the toughest year of their educational life."

Coach Schnarr eludes to this year being the toughest in these athletes' educational lives and that's why the academic awards have some added excitement and feel to them this year. Even those who were still able to come on campus for certain classes, it's been a year like no other.

Grace Mazur, a third-year student-athlete on the Women's Volleyball team, says although she was able to learn on campus at times, it was still challenging to connect with those around her with the majority of the work coming online.

"I was fortunate enough to be both in the classroom and online but some challenges were definitely being stuck on a screen 24/7 and I'm a very hands on type of person," says Mazur, a graduate of the Police Foundations program who moved onto the Advanced Police Studies program this year. "It wasn't fun being online as it was harder to create bonds with both professors and my classmates."

The academic changes created a difficult transition for many student-athletes and even more so without in-person athletic activities taking place. Mazur, like many other athletes across the program, says the team meetings, leadership programs and continued accountability throughout the year was important to keep the balance between academics and athletics.

"Our team still had commitments of meetings, tasks to complete, game planning and workouts. With not being able to be on the court, we still had a big focus on volleyball and have always had a big focus on school," added Mazur. "I was able to dive in academically and focus on my studies by putting my head down and grinding it out for myself and for my team!"

Mazur wasn't the only one who benefitted from the accountability and continued focus from the volleyball as over 50 per cent of the women's volleyball team received All-Academic honours.

The hard-work of the team over the past year hasn't gone unnoticed and their continued dedication to the Mountaineers program over the past year is acknowledged with the 2020-2021 Team Scholastic Award.