For the 15th time, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) honored McCallie's soccer team with the High School Team National Academic Award. Only six schools in the country have been honored more times than McCallie since the inception of the award.
In a season where the Blue Tornado finished the year ranked 6th in the country on the field, the team also earned a 3.64 cumulative GPA, second only to Tullahoma High School among boys programs in Tennessee.
McCallie's class of 2017 soccer players included academic standouts such as Obi Ilozor who is attending Harvard, Grant Brown at Wake Forest, and Jacob Stallings who earned a perfect 36 on the ACT and is attending Vanderbilt.
Additionally, Drew Viscomi and Will McGregor were named two of the 36 NSCAA Scholar-All Americans. McGregor, who is attending UNC-Chapel Hill on the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, earned First Team All-State honors last season as a center-mid for the 2017 Division II-AA State Champion Blue Tornado. He also joined McCallie soccer players Wesley Brown and David Bowman as winners of the Times Free Press Franklin Academic Award, given to the best all-around student-athlete in the city.
Three of the last four winners of the Franklin Award have been McCallie soccer players. Viscomi, the 2017 Tennessee Gatorade Player of the Year and finalist for USA Today National Player of the Year, attends Northwestern where he notched a goal and an assist this week as a starter for the Wildcats in back-to-back wins for Northwestern.
Other local schools to earn the NSCAA High School Team National Academic Award this past year were Baylor, and Chattanooga Christian School's boys teams along with Baylor's girls team.