University of Wisconsin’s Division I sports scored high above the national average according to calculations of student athlete’s academic performance released Monday by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The numbers are based on NCAA’s newly constructed Academic Progress Rate, which measures the performance of all Division I school’s sports academic performance. The NCAA introduced the APR rate in hopes of improving the academic scores of students involved in athletics at their respective schools.

If schools fall below the cutoff score, then they could face penalties such as warnings or potential suspensions from NCAA tournaments and games for long-term offenders, according to UW Athletics spokesperson Steve Malchow.

He said the announced cutoff rate will not go into effect until fall of 2006, so the reported scores for each school only serve as a tool to give students and coaches an idea of how their team currently stands.

“[The APR scores] give people a snapshot of where they are,” Malchow said. “We are in the educational phase.”

The APR rate is calculated from a point system based on academic eligibility and retention on team rosters, which allows for student athletes to score up to two points per semester. Each player’s score is then added and multiplied by 1000 to get the final APR rate for the team.

UW athletics scores ranked above cutoff score with an overall 2003-04 APR rate of 960, greater than the Division I-A mean of 948. The cutoff score, which was announced Monday, stands at 925.

In addition, nine out of the total 23 UW sports programs scored a perfect 1000 on the rating system. These sports included men’s cross country, men’s tennis, men’s indoor track, women’s cross country, women’s golf, women’s ice hockey, women’s swimming, women’s tennis and women’s indoor track.

“I offer my congratulations to the many athletes that have excelled in the classroom at the UW and make special mention of the nine sports that reported perfect scores,” Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin head football coach and director of athletics said in a press release.

However, despite the high scores of most UW sports, there were two exceptions; UW men’s outdoor track with a rating of 913 and Badgers football, receiving an APR rate of 916.

Malchow said that these two scores would most likely not stand as an issue when the APR rates go into effect, because they are so close to the cutoff rate. In addition, he pointed out the NCAA gave a warning that the calcuated rates could be misleading due to the small sample sizes coming from only one year of data.

“Because of that, the NCAA will not be using these data alone for the purpose of rewarding or penalizing institutions,” according to the NCAA APR report. “Eventually, the NCAA anticipates reporting data only on the basis of a four-year rolling fate for all sports.”

However, if these two sports remain under the APR cutoff rate, scholarships could be taken away from these athletes and awarded to different student athletes.

Additional UW APR ratings include a score of 962 for men’s basketball, an APR of 957 for men’s hockey and a 929 for women’s basketball.