Three UVA football players earn All-ACC Academic Team honors

Three UVA football players have been named to the 2016 Atlantic Coast Conference All-Academic Football Team, as announced by the league commissioner John Swofford.

Punter Nicholas Conte (Sr., Roanoke Va.) and inside linebacker Micah Kiser (Jr., Baltimore, Md.) each repeat as All-ACC Academic honorees. Conte and Kiser also were awarded first-team All-ACC honors in 2016, marking the first season UVA has had multiple players earn first-team All-ACC honors and All-ACC Academic accolades since 1998 when three Cavaliers did so (Casey Crawford, Patrick Kerney, Noel LaMontagne). Kiser accomplished the feat a year ago and joins Tiki Barber (1995 and 1996), Jim Dombrowski (1984 and 1995) and Noel LaMontagne (1998 and 1999) who have earned All-ACC Academic honors multiple times.

Conte and Kiser mark the 28th and 29th Cavaliers since 1954 to be a first-team All-ACC honoree and make the All-ACC Academic team. Since 1990 there have been 20 Cavaliers to accomplish the feat.

Offensive guard Jack McDonald (Jr., Quincy, Mass.) joins Conte and Kiser on the All-ACC Academic team. It is McDonald’s first nod on the All-ACC Academic team.

The ACC has selected an ACC All-Academic Team every year since 1954, and with the addition of the trio, UVA has had 218 Cavaliers earn such honors since the inception of the award.

To be eligible for consideration for the team, a student-athlete must have earned a 3.00 grade point average for the previous semester and maintained a 3.00 cumulative average during his undergraduate and/or graduate academic career. All 14 ACC schools were represented on the team.