PEORIA, Ill. -- Senior Lyle Burns (Mahomet, Ill./Seymour/Parkland C.C.) and junior Bobby Jacobs (Valparaiso, Ind./Valparaiso) have both been named First-Team Missouri Valley Conference Scholar-Athletes according to an announcement by the league office Monday.
Burns is the fourth two-time MVC Scholar-Athlete selection in program history after earning the award in 2014-15 as a junior and Bradley had two individuals named to the Valley's Scholar-Athlete team in the same season for third time in program history.
A business management and leadership major with a 3.82 cumulative grade point average, Burns earned All-Missouri Valley Conference honors in 2015-16 and is a two-time MVC Scholar-Athlete selection. He was a four-time MVC Golfer of the Week pick his senior year and earned the award a school record five times in his two years on The Hilltop. In 2015-16, Burns won three individual medalist titles and had a team-high eight top-10 finishes.
Burns ranked second on the team and fourth in the MVC with a 73.06 stroke average, which ranks second among Bradley season marks. He wrapped up his career with two of the top six season averages in school and his career average of 73.79 is the best in Bradley history. Burns placed in the top 10 in 12 of his last 17 tournaments and took sixth at the 2016 MVC Championship to wrap up his collegiate career.
Jacobs took home First-Team MVC Scholar-Athlete honors after receiving honorable mention MVC Scholar-Athlete recognition in 2014-15. He played in 24 of 33 rounds and ranked fifth on the squad with a 78.42 season average. Jacobs matched a season-best 72 to help the Braves win the Bradley Invitational and tied for fourth at the I-74 Individual Challenge for his best finish of the year.
A civil engineering major with a perfect 4.00 cumulative grade point average, Jacobs has received the MVC Commissioner's Academic Excellence Award twice and also been named to the MVC Honor Roll each of the last two years. Last week he was a recipient of the State Farm MVC Good Neighbor Award.
The criteria for the MVC scholar-athlete team parallels the CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) standards for its Academic All-America® program. Nominees must have at least a 3.20 cumulative grade point average (4.0 scale), while the student-athletes must have reached sophomore athletic and academic standing at their institutions and must have participated in at least 50 percent of his team's rounds or played at the MVC Championship.
