Florida State Salutes Top Scholar-Athletes At Annual Golden Torch Gala

Nov. 6, 2006

Tallahassee, Fla. –

Dutch Baughman, the Executive Director of the Division 1-A Athletic Director’s Association, was the featured speaker at Florida State‘s annual Golden Torch Gala held Monday to honor FSU’s outstanding scholar-athletes from the 2005-06 academic year.  The black tie event is sponsored by the FSU Athletics Department and Seminole Boosters, Inc. and recognizes top academic performances by both individual student-athletes and the top team performances.

Florida State‘s women’s tennis team repeated as the team Golden Torch winners with the top overall academic performance of any Seminole women’s team.  The men’s swimming and diving team won the men’s Golden Torch team award.  In addition, an overall Golden Torch Award is given to the top male and female student-athletes of the year and there were ties on both sides.  Golfer Caroline Larsson, tennis’ Lisa Nystrom-Skold and swimmer Katie Ronan tied as the winner of the women’s overall Golden Torch.  The men’s top scholar-athletes were both from the track and field program with Tom Lancashire and Javier Garcia-Tunon finishing tied for the top overall award.

“We are extremely proud of our student-athletes and we feel that it is as important or perhaps even more important to recognize their accomplishments as students,” said Dave Hart, Director of Athletics at Florida State.   “We had an outstanding year last year in terms of the performance of our student-athlete population both in compeition and academic performance.  We place a very high priority on our students excelling in the class room and it is rewarding to note that the vast majority of our student-athletes are not just good students, but exceptional ones.”

In addition to the team and top overall awards, Golden Torch winners were awarded for the top academic performers in each sport: