May 27, 2015 BEAUMONT, Texas - Eleven of Lamar's 17 varsity sports maintained a 970 or higher rolling Academic Progress Rate (APR) according to the NCAA which released its annual report Wednesday afternoon.

"I am pleased with the progress of all of our teams," said Lamar Director of Athletics Jason Henderson. "We saw improvement from all of our programs. I am happy with the strides we are making as an athletics department. The academic progress of our student-athletes is something that we all take very serious at Lamar."

Several LU squads stood out within the Southland Conference. Men's golf led the Southland with a 984, while the Lady Cardinals basketball team posted the league's second-best mark with a 974. The Lamar women's golf team recorded the highest APR of all LU squads with a 989.

A comprehensive reform effort by the NCAA, which began in the early 2000s, adopted the APR at the 2004 convention. The APR, or Academic Progress Rate, holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term.

The APR is calculated as follows - each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible and the team's total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team's Academic Progress Rate. In addition to a team's current-season APR, its rolling four-year average is also used to determine accountability.

-LAMAR-