ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Steffi Jones of The University of New Mexico women’s track and field team was named to the 2018-19 Google Cloud Academic All-America® NCAA Division I M/W Track & Field/Cross Country Team as announced by CoSIDA on Thursday.
Recognizing the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performances in the athletic realm and in the classroom. The junior earned a spot on the third team after carrying a 4.19 GPA in biochemistry. It is her first Academic All-America honor and comes after being named to the all-district team in late May.
From Plano, Texas, Jones was one of 11 selected to the District 7 first team, which allowed her to advance to the national all-America ballot.
Jones’ selection marks the fourth straight year that a UNM women’s runner made the team, following Alice Wright (2016, 2017, 2018) and Sophie Connor (2016, 2017) and the seventh consecutive year that a member of the cross country and track and field team has been named. Jones was just one of three student-athletes from the Mountain West to be named an overall all-American, with Utah State and Boise State each earning a spot on the first team.
Among the 90 student-athletes selected to the teams on both the men’s and women’s side, 20 men and 33 women carry a 4.0 GPA or higher.
Athletically, Jones had five top-three finishes in the outdoor season and competed in five meets in the indoor season with a runner-up finish while running predominately the 800-meter. During the cross country season, Jones competed in two races.
Jones is the fifth Lobo to earn Academic All-America honors in the 2019-20 academic year. Also earning the distinction for UNM this year was Jared Mang (second team, baseball), Andrea Howard (second team, softball), Simon Spangenberg (first team, men’s soccer) and Katherine Irwin (first team, skiing). The University of New Mexico has had at least two Google Cloud Academic All-America selections in each of the last 16 years and at least one every academic year since the 1993-94 year. In addition, Jones earned UNM’s 115th Google Cloud Academic All-America honor all-time and the 88th since the year 2000.