The Bay Valley Commissioner’s Cup is an award given to the school in the conference whose criteria consist of; respective finish of each sport and the GPA of the athletic program as a whole. 

With the program having an  average 3.1 GPA, the student athletes showed not only during games, but also for class.

The inaugural award was given to Los Medanos College as a result of what the athletic teams achieved last season. 

The main purpose of the BVC Commissioner’s Cup is to acknowledge a solid athletic program.

“There’s good athletic programs in the Bay Valley Conference so they [10 Athletics Directors of the schools in the BVC] came up with the criteria,” according to Richard Villegas, the Athletic Director of LMC. 

The way the process is set, all 10 Athletic Directors send over the statistics from their respective schools to the conference’s Sports Information Director. The director then gathers all of the information, which is sent to the Commissioner who then chooses which school will be awarded.

Women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, and baseball all won a conference title and qualified for postseason play while men’s basketball did not win a title, but qualified for playoffs. 

Football is not counted when determining the statistics because the team is not in the BVC.

Another aspect of this new award brings is the inclusion of academic success, instead of just on the field,

“They’re called student-athletes, not athletic students. I think that’s an important distinction to remember that they’re student-athletes first. I think it’s awesome that the BVC started this.” said Lou Panzella, head coach of the women’s volleyball team. 

“The philosophy is to get students to come here and use athletics to come and get an education,” said Villegas “We tell our coaches to make sure [they] recruit good people, hopefully you get good athletes, but we need to get good students. We need to get student athletes that understand why they are here.” 

This could help pave the way for LMC to be seen as a top-choice school for athletes coming from the Bay Valley Athletic League, the local highschool athletic league. 

“I think our coaches have done a good job out there recruiting, getting out there in the community, into the local high schools and getting the local athletes to come to LMC” said Villegas.

This season, the soccer team has many incoming players joining from the BVAL.

“I think we still need help getting the word out that local kids don’t need to leave to bigger programs,” said Sullivan. 

Overall introducing the BVC Commissioner’s Cup should help with recruiting and for LMC to gain more exposure for being recognized for having the best athletics program in the BVC, according to Villegas.