ROLLA, Mo. – For the first time, Missouri S&T has been selected as the recipient of the James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Award for the 2022-23 season by the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

The Miner program, which had six of its teams earn the GLVC's team sportsmanship award for the individual sports over the course of the past season, will be honored at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car GLVC Spring Awards Reception in St. Charles, Mo., on Tuesday, May 23. It is one of two awards that Missouri S&T will receive at the reception, as it was also named as the winner of the James J. McGowan Visionary Award.

Missouri S&T was selected for the sportsmanship award based on a process where during the initial nominations, each institution's coach ranks the top three teams within the sport that best displayed good sportsmanship throughout the season. The team with the highest point total is then named that sport's James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Team Award winner. At the conclusion of the academic year, the institution that accumulated the highest point total across all sports is named the James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Overall Award winner.

The award was first presented by the GLVC in 2004, two seasons before Missouri S&T joined the conference.  Under the guidance of Director of Athletics Melissa Ringhausen, the Miners accumulated the most points during the 2022-23 season, featuring team sportsmanship wins in both men's and women's cross country, men's swimming and diving, men's and women's indoor track and field, as well as women's outdoor track and field.

In addition to the team award, each institution also selects one male and one female student-athlete from its season-long list of honorees from each GLVC-sponsored sport as its James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Individual Award winners.  Missouri S&T's winners for the 2022-23 season were Santiago Cervantes, a student-athlete from the men's soccer program and Lilli Machado, a student-athlete from the women's basketball team.

The GLVC renamed its annual sportsmanship award in 2016 after Spalding, who is referenced as one of the league's two "Founding Fathers" and for his longtime service at former conference member Bellarmine University. Spalding was first a basketball student-athlete at Bellarmine, who later returned to serve his alma mater as a coach and later Director of Athletics. Spalding played a prominent role in both the formation of the GLVC and the sponsorship expansion of women's athletics within the league. Long revered as one of the league's pioneers, Spalding was inducted as a charter member of the GLVC Hall of Fame in 2001. He died in 2012 at the age of 79, following a lengthy illness.