GEORGETOWN, Texas -- In a announcement made at Sunday's conference championship, Colorado College’s James Settles was named the 2023 SCAC Men’s Track and Field Elite 19 award winner.
Settles, a junior computer science major from Claremont, Calif., currently holds a 4.000 GPA and earned three All-SCAC honors at this weekend’s SCAC Championships. Settles took top honors in both the 10,000-meters (32:20.95) and 5,000-meters (14:56.91) and finished third in the 1,500-meters (4:01.57). He also pulled off the 5,000/10,000 sweep in 2021 and is just the third SCAC man to win both races at a single championship twice in a career.
This marks the second Elite 19 honor of 2022-23 for Settles who won the league’s men’s Cross Country SCAC Elite 19 honor last fall. He joins Trinity’s Keaton Holt as the only other male student-athlete to win both the SCAC Cross Country and SCAC Track and Field Elite 19 honoree in the same athletic year. Holt accomplished the feat, winning the 2020-21 Cross Country honor and the 2021 Track and Field accolade.
Established prior to the 2018-19 academic year and meant to recognize the best of the best within each conference sponsored-sport as it relates to both academic and athletic achievement, the SCAC Elite 19 is awarded to the student-athlete who has completed the equivalent of at least 60 credit hours at his or her current institution and has at least a cumulative 3.25 GPA. The student-athlete must also have earned All-SCAC First, Second or Third Team honors in his/her sport for that particular season.
