Katie Burnham Earns Academic All-America Honors
6/21/2018 12:00:00 AM | Track and Field
Official Release | Google Cloud Academic All-America Team, presented by CoSIDA 
USAF ACADEMY, Colo. -- Air Force senior Katie Burnham was named to the Google Cloud Academic All-America Division I Cross Country and Track/Field Team this afternoon (June 21), earning third-team status and becoming the 11th Falcon in program history to be recognized by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Graduating in May with a 3.95 GPA in mathematics, Burnham competed in every cross country race for the Falcons' this past season after helping Air Force to a program best finish at the conference meet (second) and its first-ever NCAA appearance in 2016. The senior clocked the ninth-fastest 5000-meter time in Academy history (17:02.38) at the 2017 Drake Relays and ran a leg of the distance medley relay that posted the program's ninth-fastest time (12:05.02, adjusted for altitude) at the conference meet that year, while also competing in the 1500-meter and mile events.
A seven-time academic all-conference selection and six-time Mountain West Scholar-Athlete, Burnham was awarded the Draper Laboratory Fellowship to work on national defense projects while earning a master's degree in Operations Research at MIT next fall. A member of the Academy's Scholar Program, she also served as the cross country team captain and was the lead of the Academy group that won the Analytics Challenge at the University of Denver.
To be eligible for Academic All-America consideration, a student-athlete must be a varsity starter or key reserve, maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.30 or higher on a scale of 4.00, have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at his/her current institution, be nominated by his/her sports information director and earn first-team status at the District level.
Eleven Falcons have been selected to the Academic All-American team a total of 14 times, as Burnham joined Mary Manning (1984, 1985), Chris Nelson (1991, 1992), Nick Wilson (2006), Kenny Grosselin (2008), Brittany Morrale (2010), Matthew Bell (2013), Jeremy Drenckhahn (2013), Rebecca Esselstein (2013, 2014, 2015), Josh Nielsen (2014) and Taylor Smith (2016).
Players Mentioned
