The Peach Belt Conference awarded Georgia College & State University numerous accolades during the annual Peach Belt Conference (PBC) awards event in May. GCSU was awarded the PBC Institution of the Year Sportsmanship Award, in addition to earning team sportsmanship awards for volleyball, men’s tennis and men’s basketball. The GCSU sports information staff was also recognized with the SID Staff of the Year award.

The PBC comprises 10 NCAA Division II member institutions and includes 18 championship sports. Georgia College is a charter member of the PBC and President Cathy Cox is the incoming President of the PBC Board of Directors.

Georgia College was presented the 2023-24 Peach Belt Conference Institution of the Year Sportsmanship Award. A banner that rotates from winning school to winning school will remain in Milledgeville for a second-straight year. The award is the fourth overall for GCSU after previous wins in 2017 and 2021.

The annual honor is given to the institution displaying the best overall sportsmanship for the 2023-24 season and culminates the PBC's season-long sportsmanship recognition program.

Following each championship sports season, a Team Sportsmanship Award is presented to the team in that sport that best exemplifies what the award stands for: the spirit of sportsmanship, a high degree of integrity, character and class. Each team award is voted on by other teams who compete in that sport and points are awarded on how each team finished in the voting.

In 2023-24, GCSU won Team Sportsmanship Awards in men's tennis, men's basketball and volleyball. The three awards give the Bobcats 29 since the inception of the program, tied for second-most in the PBC, and represents the ninth time GCSU has had multiple awards in the same season.

The sports information staff at Georgia College was honored as the SID Staff of the Year at the PBC annual awards dinner.

Led by Assistant Director of Athletics for Communications Michael MacEachern, the Georgia College sports information office provided outstanding coverage of the institution’s 11 sports programs using social media, website coverage, photography, press conferences and public events. The office manages gcsubobcats.com, the official website of GCSU athletics, as well as the Bobcat Sports Network, which produced 154 live broadcasts during the 2023-24 athletic year.

The office also produced the broadcast for the 2024 PBC baseball championship, hosted at John Kurtz Field in Milledgeville, and was instrumental in assisting the PBC with its first-ever basketball media day coverage.

This is MacEachern’s second SID Staff award, as well as the second award for Georgia College which last won the award in 2015. MacEachern, who joined Georgia College last year, is the longest-tenured athletics communications professional in the Peach Belt.

MacEachern is joined in the GCSU Sports Information Office by graduate assistant Bailey Clark, along with a dedicated team of student workers.

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