David Cooper
Tusculum College’s David Cooper has been named the 2014 South Atlantic Conference Men’s Cross Country Scholar Athlete of the Year.
The SAC Scholar Athlete of the Year Award is a distinction that recognizes excellence in athletics, academics, service and leadership. It is presented to one student-athlete in each of the conference’s 18 championship sports and is selected by the league’s faculty athletics representatives.
Cooper, a senior from Greeneville, Tenn., earns this honor for a second straight season and becomes only the second two-time honoree of this award in program history joining former Pioneer great Simon Holzapfel (2009, 2010). He also becomes only the seventh two-time recipient of the award in conference history.
Cooper carries a perfect 4.0 cumulative grade point average and is majoring in biology at Tusculum. He is a two-time Capital One Academic All-America® Men’s Cross Country/Track & Field Team selection, earning second team honors as a sophomore and was a first team honoree last year.
The Chuckey-Doak High School graduate is a member of the Tusculum Dean’s List, Tusculum President’s List and the SAC Commissioner’s Honor Roll. He is also a member of the Alpha Chi Honors Society and the Charles Oliver Gray Honors List. He is the recipient of the Greene County Endowed Scholarship, the Llewelyn M. Fox ’16 Memorial Annual Scholarship and the Ray L. Bowman ’42 Endowed Scholarship.
On the course, Cooper is a three-time All-SAC selection earning first team honors in 2012 and finished eighth at the conference championship in each of the last two years to garner second team recognition. In 2011, he named to the SAC All-Freshman Team and is a four-year team captain.
He has completed one of the finest running careers in Tusculum history. He owns 10 of the top-25 running times (8,000 meters) in program history, including two in the top-10. His career-best 8K time of 26:02 at this year’s Greater Louisville Classic is the fourth-lowest ever by a Pioneer. He recorded three individual wins in his career and led the Pioneers to a pair of team titles as well.
Cooper has been involved in numerous campus and community leadership roles, serving with the Nettie Day of Service, the Greene County YMCA, the TC Athletic Judicial Board and the Greene County Humane Society. He is also the current president of the Pioneer Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and is a past participant of the SAC Student-Athlete Leadership Conference.
This marks the 50th time that a Tusculum student-athlete has earned SAC Scholar Athlete of the Year honors, the most by any league member since 1999.