NEW ORLEANS — For only the second time in program history, the Portland State men's and women's track & field teams each earned USTFCCCA All-Academic team awards Monday, while team captains Donté Robinson and Kaila Gibson picked up USTFCCCA All-Academic Individual honors.
 
Both the Viking men's and women's programs had only earned USTFCCCA All-Academic team honors in the same year once before, which was back in 2016. Neither program had earned the team award since then, but both earned the honor Monday with cumulative GPAs of 3.07 and 3.49, respectively.
 
Robinson and Gibson, meanwhile, each earned the first USTFCCCA All-Academic individual honor of their respective careers. Robinson becomes only the second men's athlete to earn the honor for the Vikings, joining his former teammate Spenser Schmidt, who earned the honor in 2016.
 
The USTFCCCA All-Academic award caps a decorated Vikings career for Robinson, who won three Big Sky titles and earned five all-conference honors in the multi events. Robinson swept the Big Sky heptathlon and decathlon titles during the 2018 indoor and outdoor track & field seasons, joining former NCAA first-team All-American Nick Trubachik as the only two Vikings to win both titles in the same year.
 
Robinson also joined Trubachik as the only two athletes in the history of the Big Sky Conference to repeat as the Big Sky heptathlon champion back in February. Robinson won his second straight heptathlon title with 5,394 points, just two off the personal best he set at the UW Invitational earlier in the year. Robinson's score at the UW Invitational left him just 36 points shy of Trubachik's school record in the event, and Robinson also finished his career second to Trubachik in the decathlon (Trubachik, 7,510 points; Robinson 7,307 points).
 
Gibson had a run of standout performances during the 2018-19 academic year. It began in the fall, when Gibson earned All-Big Sky honors with a ninth-place finish at the Big Sky cross country meet. Gibson then went on to break her own school record in the indoor 5,000 meters, and qualified for her first NCAA West Prelims in the outdoor 10,000 meters. Gibson shaved more than 70 seconds off her personal best in the 10k while qualifying with a time of 34:12.51 at the Stanford Invitational at the end of March.
 
Teams must have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale to earn the USTFCCCA All-Academic Team award. Individuals must have a cumulative GPA of 3.25 or higher and have either finished the regular season ranked in the national top 96 in an individual event during the indoor season, or participated in any round of the NCAA Division I Championships (including preliminary rounds) during the outdoor season.