LEXINGTON, KY - The 2019 national champion Johns Hopkins volleyball team earned its seventh-consecutive American Volleyball Coaches Association Team Academic Award, the AVCA announced earlier this week. The Blue Jays were one of a record-high 1,315 teams spread across eight different sectors to earn the coveted award for the 2019-20 academic year.

Developed in 1993, the AVCA Academic Team Award honors collegiate and high school volleyball programs that maintained a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.30 on a 4.0 scale for the academic year. It is the single largest award offered by quantity of schools, student-athletes and coaches honored.

Johns Hopkins was one of 175 Division III schools to garner this year's team honor. The Blue Jays' 3.79 GPA also earned the team AVCA Team Academic Honor Roll recognition, which is awarded to the top-49 Division III programs in terms of cumulative GPA. 

This year's AVCA Team Academic Award marks the seventh-straight such award for Johns Hopkins and eighth in the past nine years. The Jays joined nine other Centennial Conference schools to be honored for the 2019-20 academic year, and their streak of seven consecutive awards is good for the third-longest active streak in the conference.

The winners of the inaugural Johns Hopkins Athletics "Team of the Decade" tournament, the 2019 Blue Jay volleyball team will forever go down as one of the most successful teams in Division III volleyball history. The Jays were the first team since 1999 to be crowned undefeated national champions, and were one of only three teams ever to accomplish that feat. Hopkins garnered a program-best four AVCA All-Americans, including the school's first two First Team All-Americans (Natalie Aston, Simone Bliss).

It remains to be seen or determined when Johns Hopkins will be back on the hardwood, as the Centennial Conference has suspended all Fall competition through September.