Lopez Soccer Team wins Academic State Championship

Published 10:35 am Wednesday, December 23, 2009

For the second year in a row, the Lopez Lobos soccer team has won the Washington Interscholastic Athletics Association 1B Team Academic State Championship.

“I really want to congratulate Melanie Weber and her team for winning this award,” Athletic Director Larry Berg said. “Our soccer team had the highest team GPA (3.655) for all 1B boys’ soccer teams this fall season. This makes two years in a row that we have had the honor of winning this award.”

The WIAA takes the grade average of the entire team, and divides it by the number of players. They do this for every team in the state of Washington.

“When Coach Berg called to congratulate me, I just thought, it’s the teachers, the parents and the kids, who have earned this, not me,” coach Melanie Weber said. “It’s the parents who have enforced good learning behaviors in their children who should be getting congratulated. And I had a really good group of kids who met these standards.”

“They kept up their studies during soccer season, which is admirable,” Berg said.

“Many soccer players and motivated athletes in general tend to have a lot of desire for success,” Weber said. “And much of the time, that same athletic drive tends to influence the need to excel in education.”