JAMES SAPP OF CENTENARY COLLEGE, a senior forward on the Gents basketball team, has been chosen as the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Character & Community Male Student-Athlete-of-the-Week for the week beginning January 30, 2017.
The SCAC honors the efforts of student-athletes who excel in the field of athletics, and also serve their campus and community.
Sapp is a biology major at Centenary. The current conference leader in both scoring (21.9) and rebounding (10.3), he is very involved with the community – both as a member of the basketball team and a member of a joint fraternity with LSU-Shreveport. Also, he and the rest of the Gents basketball team participates in community service every year. Most recently on Martin Luther King Day, Sapp and the rest of the team volunteered on their day off at Common Ground, a community outreach center in Shreveport.
“I am very excited to receive this honor. It feels better than any athletic award,” said Sapp. “I have been given so many blessings in my life, and it feels good to be a beacon of hope for others and be a part of something bigger than myself. I am also proud when people see the letters of the fraternity I belong to – that they know it stands for community service.”
Sapp and a former Gents basketball player also helped revive Alpha Phi Alpha, the LSUS-Centenary joint fraternity that puts focus on community service. Projects include a canned food drive and a basketball camp for elementary kids that Sapp helped organize at Centenary in the summer of 2016. Sapp, in conjunction with his fraternity, he also helps mentor high school kids.
Sapp even did work for a convention held in Shreveport last weekend while the Gents were playing on the road.
“We are excited for James to receive this honor. He spends a lot of time involved with his fraternity and the community,” explained Gents head coach Adam Walsh. “Sapp gives back to the community whenever he has the chance. This award is an example of his growth and maturity as a student-athlete and as a young man. I am very proud of him.”
Sapp continues to lead the SCAC in both scoring and rebounds per game, trying to become the first player in nine seasons to achieve this feat.
This season, Sapp averages 23.8 points per game in SCAC play and has scored 28.2 points per game in the last five contests.
For his career, Sapp garnered SCAC Offensive Player of the Year honors for the 2014-15 season and has been named First Team All-Conference each of the last two seasons. The most recent SCAC Player of the Week, he has won this distinction twice this season and nine times in his career.
Sapp also was named Louisiana Men’s Basketball Player of the Week on two occasions this season.