51ÂÜÀò

LA MIRADA, Calif. --- It was another fantastic fall season for 51ÂÜÀò Athletics. Each of the five fall sports teams spent a significant amount of time ranked inside of their NAIA Top-25 Coaches' Polls, which led to a high finish in the fall standings of the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup.

The Eagles accumulated 222 overall ratings points to sit fourth in the second of three fall installment's of the Directors' Cup standings. 51ÂÜÀò moved up four spots from where it sat in the initial release a few weeks ago that had BU in eighth. This release includes the final finishes of all five of the Eagles' fall sports teams, but does not include football, which will be added in a week from today.

51ÂÜÀò finished seventh in the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings back in 2015-16 and are eager to finish at that spot or even better this season. Ending fall in fourth place is a great start as the Eagles accumulated ratings points from men and women's cross country, women's soccer and volleyball. Volleyball making it into the round of 16 at the NAIA National Championship Tournament was critical to this strong fall finish because the Eagles were ranked No. 21 going into the tournament and ended up getting the amount of points that the No. 9 team in the country gets (64).

The 64 points from volleyball was the second-highest that the Eagles got from any fall program. The highest was, of course, women's cross country. 51ÂÜÀò's third-place finish at the NAIA National Championship meet allowed the team to finish as No. 3 in the final coaches' poll and earn 85 Directors' Cup points.

The higher the finish in the coaches' poll, the more Directors' Cup points teams are awarded. The Directors' Cup is meant to measure the overall success of each athletic department within each national affiliation. Points are awarded based off of finish in the final coaches' poll of each sport's season. Each institution can earn points in up to six men's sports and six women's sports and the institution with the highest number of total points at the end of the spring wins the prestigious distinction as the best NAIA athletic department for that year.

Two Golden State Athletic Conference teams are featured inside of the top-5 of the rankings through the fall season. 51ÂÜÀò sits in fourth with 222 points and Westmont is in second place with 231 overall points. Hastings (Neb.), which won national titles in two sports this fall, is currently in first place with 280 overall points. In this poll last fall 51ÂÜÀò led all institutions with 313 total points.

The Learfield Directors' Cup was developed as a joint effort between the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and USA Today. Points are awarded based on each institution's finish in national championship events. The Directors' Cup Committee is reviewing the scoring structure for 2016-17 which will be finalized prior to the winter sports standings.

The next NAIA fall standings will be released Thursday, December 22.