2020 CoSIDA Academic All-American Teams
INDIANAPOLIS – Tyler Thompson became the fourth Carson-Newman baseball player in the history of the program to earn College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Baseball Academic All-American distinction being a second-team selection Wednesday.
The Gallatin, Tenn. native joins two-time winner Brandon Burchfield (2006-07), Paul Kirby (2017) and Dillon Cate (2018) as C-N baseball athletes earning the nation's top academic-athlete honor.
With a 3.53 grade-point average in biology, the outfielder is one of five players from the South Atlantic Conference to earn the award out of the 36 Division II players given laurels by the organization.
Once again one of the top hitters in the country in a CoVid-19 shortened 2020 season, Thompson ranked fifth in the country in hits racking up 39 leading the team with 11 multi-hit efforts and pacing the crew with five multi-RBI outings. The outfielder produced 60 total bases in the shortened season to rank 20th in the country.
Over 25 games, he posted a slash line of .379/.422/.583 with four homers, 20 RBIs, five doubles, two triples, four stolen bases and 25 runs scored. In a three-game series against No. 1 Tampa, he notched a multi-hit effort in each of the three games going 8-for-13 with two homers, three RBIs and five runs scored. That series sparked a hot close to the year where is had 10 multi-hit effort over the final 16 outings of the year going 32-for-68, .471, at the dish.
In nine conference games, the junior hit .417 posting the third-most hits in the league with 15, five of which went for extra bases. He has started 114 of the 118 games he has played in his career posting a .374 batting average with 15 homers and 79 runs batted in.
Carson-Newman has produced 48 overall Academic All-Americans since softball's Brandi Hardin became the school's first winner in 1992. Since 2015, 31 Eagles have been selected. Thompson is the sixth to earn the plaudit during the 2019-20 academic calendar joining football's Antonio Wimbush, women's soccer's Lira Mathes and women's basketball's Kayla Marosites and softball's Abby Fiessinger and KaraLynne Levi.
The Division II Academic All-America® program is being financially supported by the NCAA Division II national governance structure to assist CoSIDA with handling the awards fulfillment aspects for the 2019-20 Division II Academic All-America® teams program. Student-athletes were selected based on career statistics.
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