The NWCA announced its 2017 All-Academic awards recently. Included among the 135 Division I wrestlers on the list were 101 NCAA tournament qualifiers, 35 All-Americans, and four national champions.

Penn State's Zain Retherford and Jason Nolf, Ohio State's Kyle Snyder, and Oklahoma State's Dean Heil are the quartet of champs who exemplified the scholar-athlete ethos by capping off their stellar seasons with the academic honors.

Thirty programs also received All-Academic team recognition from the NWCA. Harvard topped the list, sporting a sterling cumulative team GPA of 3.586. The Crimson were joined by five other Ivy League programs and an additional four from the EIWA, the most represented conference on the list. The Big Ten and the MAC tied for the second most with five programs apiece.

You can visit the NWCA's official site for a complete list of this year's All-Academic individuals and teams.

Congratulations to all the big brains in our beloved sport.

Watch fellow northeast Ohioans and All-Academic individual award winners Dean Heil and George DiCamillo in the NCAA finals in the video below.


Heil and DiCam have been doing the school and wrestling thing for a while. Below is a match between them from the from back in their days as rival prep school students.