BERKELEY – The Cal football program was well-represented at the school’s annual Student-Athlete Academic Honors Luncheon held Monday at the Berkeley City Club. Chris Adcock picked up both the Pac-12’s Tom Hansen Conference Medal as the school’s top senior male student-athlete and an Oscar Geballe Postgraduate Scholarship, Matt Anderson was honored with the team’s highest cumulative GPA for the second straight year, and Caleb Coleman was named the winner of the 2014-15 Jonathan and Judy Hoff Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award. In addition, Joey Mahalic received a standing ovation after giving the event’s keynote student-athlete speech.
The event also recognized each of the teams’ most recent conference All-Academic selections with the football squad represented by 11 student-athletes on the 2014 Pac-12 All-Academic team. Adcock and Coleman were joined on the first team by Griffin Piatt. Alejandro Crosthwaite, Brennan Scarlett and Cameron Walker earned second-team Pac-12 All-Academic selections. Todd Barr, James Langford, Cole Leininger, Hardy Nickerson and Drake Whitehurst were honorable mention picks.
“I would like to congratulate all of the student-athletes from every one of our teams honored today for being such excellent representatives of our athletic department and university,” head coach Sonny Dykes said. “It was great to see our football student-athletes well-represented. Academics have been and always will be a priority for our football program, and it’s fantastic to see our student-athletes being honored for the hard work and effort that has brought them success in the classroom.”
Check out a little more on each of the Cal football players honored today.
Adcock Adds To Long List Of Awards
The two awards picked up by Chris Adcock added to the long list he has compiled throughout his Cal career highlighted by a senior campaign in which he was a Campbell Award national semifinalist, Capital One Academic All-District 8 selection, named to the Pac-12 All-Academic team for the third consecutive season, Cal’s nominee for Pac-12 Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and a National Football Foundation Hampshire Honors Society pick.
Adcock graduated from Cal in December of 2014 with a pair of bachelor’s degrees in business administration and interdisciplinary studies with a final 3.534 GPA. This month he begins jointly pursuing a master’s of public health and attending medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
"It is once again an honor to represent my team, University, and student-athlete community," Adcock said from Texas. "I am blessed to have had the opportunity to pursue my academic as well as athletic goals while at Cal. It is a time in my life that I will never forget. Thank you to the respective committees and Geballe family for their recognition of my hard work and sacrifice over the years in the classroom and on the field. I would also like to thank my fiancé, family, friends and coaches who supported me through these past few years at Cal. God Bless and Go Bears!"
Anderson Has Football’s Highest GPA For Second Straight Year
Matt Anderson does not take his second consecutive year of being honored with Cal’s highest grade point average lightly.
“I’m honored to have the opportunity to attend one of the greatest educational institutions in the world and do my best to maximize that opportunity both on and off the field,” Anderson said.
Anderson had a 3.95 combined GPA for the spring and fall 2014 semester in which he was honored for while his cumulative GPA at Cal is a 3.82. Anderson is a business administration major in the Haas School of Business.
Berkeley Native Coleman Sees Dream Come True
Earning a prestigious honor like the Jonathan and Judy Hoff Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year was a dream come true for Caleb Coleman, who attended high school at St. Mary’s College Prep in Berkeley and grew up going to Cal football games.
“This is my dream come true right before my eyes,” Coleman said. “I grew up less than a mile away from campus. I remember every time in class in high school a teacher asked us what we wanted to be and everything for me was about going to school at UC Berkeley and playing football for Cal. My eyes were on the prize, and this is where I wanted to be.”
Coleman, a business administration major with a 3.49 cumulative GPA at Cal, said he began to understand the importance of academics during his time at St. Mary’s College Prep and praised the support he has received from his family, his high school, and the Cal support system for helping get him to this point.
“So many people have helped me along the way and kept me on the right track,” Coleman said. “I feel blessed and honored to win this award. I worked really hard in the classroom and always considered that football and school go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other.”
Coleman also considers himself a team player for academics and takes the role seriously.
“This is not an easy school,” Coleman said. “Trying to balance school and football can be pretty hectic. I try to lead by example in the classroom. Anytime I have a chance I like to see how my teammates are doing academically.”
Mahalic Speech Gets Standing ‘O’
Joey Mahalic was looking forward to speaking to his fellow student-athletes at Monday’s luncheon and let them know right from the start that “this is probably one of the coolest and most rewarding experiences that I’ve ever had as an athlete to get to stand in front of you guys today and tell you a little bit about my journey to Cal.”
What Mahalic may not have realized is that he was about 10 minutes away from “my first standing ovation for anything other than an athletic performance” after a riveting speech that implored his fellow student-athletes to appreciate their experience at Cal, face adversity head on, and make a difference in the lives of kids looking up to them.
The 26-year-old Mahalic talked about how his five seasons as a top baseball prospect in the Cleveland Indians’ organization that ended with an arm injury had delayed but also inspired his college education, detailing how he learned to overcome failure to become the first Cal student-athlete to graduate from the Haas School of Business in only three years.
“I wasn’t going to let sport define my life,” Mahalic told the crowd. “The day I was released I decided I was going to go to college, get a degree that nobody could take away from me, and wasn’t going to let life defeat me like it does to so many people just because ‘plan A’ goes wrong.”
Mahalic then reflected on his time at Cal that began in the fall of 2012 and let everyone in the room know that they are in midst of “the best of the best of the best” and how lucky everyone is to be at Cal saying that “we literally get to live the dream of thousands, if not millions of kids.”
He went on to encourage his fellow student-athletes to “appreciate it and take full advantage of it every day” and to use the “unparalleled reach we have as student-athletes to make a difference.”
Mahalic closed his speech by talking about the importance of facing adversity.
“The most important thing I’ve learned during my time here at Cal is that being a student-athlete and having so much responsibility was hard,” Mahalic spoke. “I’ve learned to cherish those moments because those moments determine who you will become. That’s when you get a chance to prove to yourself and everyone else who you really are.”
Mahalic enjoyed the experience.
“I had so much fun preparing and writing this speech, putting so many of the experiences I’ve had in my life into it and sharing my story,” Mahalic said. “It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. It was too cool to get a standing ovation.”
