Conference Carolinas
Brian Hand
North Greenville and Southern Wesleyan are the only winners of the award in its history. North Greenville won the inaugural award in the 2018-19 academic year, while Southern Wesleyan has now claimed the prestigious honor for three consecutive academic years.
In just its fourth year, The Body, Mind & Soul Dr. Alan Patterson Cup is the ultimate comprehensive conference award. The award recognizes the member with the best average ranking when combining the Hawn Cup, the Sharp Award and the Messick Award.
North Greenville put together a tremendous 2021-22 academic year that is still going with its nationally top-ranked baseball team hosting an NCAA Regional. In addition to baseball winning the Conference Carolinas regular-season and tournament title, the North Greenville men’s volleyball team also won the regular-season and tournament crowns. The women’s volleyball team at North Greenville won the West division title. The men’s volleyball team also made history by sweeping Princeton to become the first-ever Conference Carolinas men’s volleyball team to claim an NCAA National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship victory.
The Crusaders collected five Team Messick Awards with the men’s basketball, the men’s and women’s golf, the women’s tennis and women’s lacrosse teams all earning the honor.
Southern Wesleyan won the Allan Sharp Award for the third straight year and swept the Conference Carolinas Messick Sportsmanship Awards for the second consecutive academic year.
Southern Wesleyan has now swept the Conference Carolinas Messick Awards (overall, men’s and women’s) three times with the Warriors also winning all three awards in the 2017-18 and the 2020-21 academic year. Southern Wesleyan also claimed the Women’s Messick Award in the 2016-17 academic year.
In collecting all three awards, Southern Wesleyan won the women’s volleyball Team Messick Award and was among the tops in all of the women’s sports. In addition, Southern Wesleyan picked up the men’s soccer, the men’s tennis and the men’s outdoor track and field Team Messick Awards and was among the tops in numerous other men’s sports.
The Conference Carolinas Directors of Athletics implemented the process by which the Conference Carolinas Messick Sportsmanship Awards are determined. A student-athlete and coach from each institution vote separately upon the sportsmanship of all conference competitors. Each institution then submits those votes to the conference office where the averages are then calculated to decide the winner for each conference-sponsored sport.
The Team Messick Sportsmanship Awards are named after John D. Messick, who was the President of former conference member East Carolina from 1947-59. Messick truly championed sportsmanship and even wrote a book entitled, “Personality and Character Development.”
In collecting the Sharp Award for the third straight year, Southern Wesleyan owned an impressive Academic Success Rate of 91 percent. The NCAA Academic Success Rate is the percentage of student-athletes who graduate within six years of initial enrollment in college.
The Allan Sharp Award is presented annually to the Conference Carolinas member institution having the highest graduation rate of student-athletes as determined by the faculty athletics representatives.
The late Allan Sharp served for over 20 years as the Atlantic Christian/Barton Faculty Athletics Representative. Dr. Sharp championed the role of athletics as an educational activity and the importance of each student-athlete performing at the same level of excellence in the classroom.
The Body, Mind & Soul Dr. Alan Patterson Cup is named after the former Conference Carolinas Commissioner. Patterson served for 32 years as the Commissioner of Conference Carolinas before retiring after the 2018-19 academic year.
As Commissioner of Conference Carolinas, Patterson championed that classroom success and sportsmanship should be valued equally with competitive success.
The Body, Mind & Soul Dr. Alan Patterson Cup Winners
2018-19: North Greenville
2019-20: Southern Wesleyan
2020-21: Southern Wesleyan
2021-22: North Greenville and Southern Wesleyan