Gatson and Jones Receive SLIAC Post Graduate Scholarships

This year's St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Post Graduate Scholarship award winners are Kasey Gatson, from Westminster College; and Jared Jones, from Blackburn College. The scholarships, selected by SLIAC Faculty Athletics Representatives (FAR), are based on the graduating student-athletes accomplishments in and out of the classroom.

Blackburn College Senior Jared Jones was named the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Male Scholar Athlete of the Year for the 2015-16 school year.  Jones, from Mitchell, Indiana, excelled in the classroom while also being a four-year member of the baseball team. Jones has also been the manager of the athletic program for the past three years in the Blackburn College Work Program.

Jones is majoring in sports administration and will be attending graduate school at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee next year.  

While attending Blackburn, Jones has spent parts of his summers either playing baseball, working in the athletic department at Indiana University, and attending a sports career symposium with the NCAA to prepare for a career in college athletics.

Jones is the first male athlete from Blackburn College to win this award with the conference. 

Westminster's senior Kasey Gatson was chosen as the 2016 St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) Female Scholar Athlete of the Year and will be awarded the post-graduate scholarship.

Gatson, a senior guard for the Westminster women's basketball team, currently holds a 3.98 cumulative GPA as a secondary business education major. She plans to graduate this May and is looking to pursue post-graduate studies or into a teaching position. 

Gatson was named to the 2015-16 College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-District First Team and is a three-time SLIAC Academic All-Conference recipient. This season, she earned a spot on the SLIAC All-Tournament Team and the All-Defensive Team. 

Gatson is the sixth Westminster recipient of this award and the third female recipient. 

The St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Post Graduate Scholarship is presented to two graduating senior student-athletes each year.  Student-athletes are nominated by their institution's Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR), must have earned two varsity letters in a sport in which the Conference sponsors a Championship and have at least a 3.5 cumulative GPA (on a 4.0 scale). Scholarship recipients are selected through a vote of the Conference FARs and receive a scholarship during their first two-years of postgraduate studies.

Previous SLIAC Post Graduate Scholarship Award Winners