ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Illinois State baseball's fifth-year junior Jake McCaw was named the Missouri Valley Conference's Scholar-Athlete of the Year, joining third-year sophomore Ryan Cermak and fifth-year senior Colin Wyman as First-Team honorees, as announced by the conference office on Tuesday morning.
Three First-Team honorees is tied for the most in the conference and McCaw is the first Redbird in program history to be named MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Year (award began in 2020). Illinois State has had at least one First-Team honoree each year since 2009 and multiple First-Team honorees in five-straight seasons.
McCaw holds a 4.00 in his MBA program is a 2022 CoSIDA Academic All-District honoree. McCaw was named First-Team Scholar-Athlete Team in 2021 and was the MVC's Dr. Charlotte West Award winner. He was also First-Team All-MVC in 2021. He finished 2022 ranking second on the team with a .296 batting average, 42 RBIs, 39 runs scored, and 12 home runs. McCaw swiped a team-high eight bases. He was the only Redbird to play in every game of 2022.
Cermak holds a 3.77 GPA in Parks and Recreation Management and is a 2022 CoSIDA Academic All-District honoree. Cermak was named MVC Defensive Player of the Year and First-Team All-MVC for the second-straight season. He finished a team-high .340 batting average, 43 RBIs, 45 runs scored and 19 home runs, becoming the first Redbird since 1999 to hit at least 15 in a single season and tied for the second-highest mark for a single-season in school history.
Wyman holds a 4.00 in his Master's of Sport Management program. He was named Honorable All-Missouri Valley Conference in 2022. Wyman's 3.69 ERA ranks sixth in the MVC while his conference-only ERA of 2.31 is fourth-lowest in the league. Wyman walked just one batter in 23.1 IP during conference-play while holding a 39:11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 53.2 IP overall.
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