∗ Arkansas State Football is hosting its 2016 Fan Appreciation Day today.

The fans are invited to Centennial Bank Stadium as the Red Wolves hold their 14th practice of fall camp at 6 p.m., which will include a full-contact scrimmage.  Posters and schedule cards will be available on the concourse of the stadium.

Howl, Scarlet, The Sound of the Natural State and the A-State spirit squads will all be at the practice as well, and the Arkansas State cheer and dance teams will debut new routines. Pending weather, seats will be tagged in the stadium that are available as 2016 season tickets.  Fans can come out beginning at 4 p.m. to take a look at available seats and purchase on site.

∗ Little Rock head baseball coach Chris Curry has announced the team will hold walk-on tryouts on Friday, Aug. 26, at Gary Hogan Field. Tryouts are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.

Only full-time enrolled students at UALR are eligible for tryouts. Students must fill out the attached waiver form and return it, along with a signed physical form (no more than a year old) from a medical doctor, to the baseball coaching staff. Proof of health insurance will also be required to tryout.

∗ The field for the 17th annual Rachel Stewart Memorial Golf Tournament is complete with 81 teams, made up of approximately 240 players, scheduled to participate in the two-day tourney this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 20-21, at Sage Meadows Country Club in Jonesboro.

The event is held each year in honor of the late Stewart, who was a four-year letter winner at Arkansas State from 1994-97.  She earned All-Sun Belt Conference honors all four years of her career and was named to the Sun Belt Conference 30-Year All-Time Team that was announced in 2006.

“We are very excited for the Rachel Stewart tournament this coming weekend,” said A-State head women’s golf coach M.J. Desbiens Shaw.  “We have a full field with a shotgun start at 8:00 a.m. Saturday and 1:00 p.m. Sunday at Sage Meadows Country Club.  We appreciate all the support from the community and the volunteers for their hard work to make this tournament a huge success.”

The tournament is a three-person scramble with the proceeds benefiting the Rachel Stewart Memorial Foundation, the A-State men’s and women’s golf programs, and the promotion of golf in the Northeast Arkansas area.

“We’re looking forward to this year’s Rachel Stewart Memorial Tournament” said A-State head men’s golf coach Mike Hagen.  “This is a first-class event that our community has embraced, and we appreciate the outstanding support from everyone involved, including our sponsors and Sage Meadows, to help make it possible.”

The post News and Notes – Aug. 20, 2016 appeared first on ArkansasSports.Net.

∗ Htut Zar will be joining the Little Rock soccer team as a new assistant coach, coach Adrian Blewitt announced on Thursday.

Zar will be the Trojans’ goalkeeper coach this fall and also help the staff with video editing.

“Htut brings with him great knowledge of the game having played for his national team and has earned a variety of high-level coaching licenses,” Blewitt said. “His personality and passion for the game is infectious. He’s a superb addition to our staff.”

Zar joins the Trojans after spending the last year as the assistant men’s soccer coach and head men’s tennis coach at the University of Minnesota Morris. While working with the Cougars, Zar put an emphasis on goalkeeper training and put together an interactive team-building program. He also established the program’s first summer youth camp and oversaw academic progress for his student-athletes.

∗ More than 2,000 Sun Belt Conference student-athletes were named to the 2015-16 Commissioner’s List and Academic Honor Roll as announced by the league office Tuesday afternoon with A-State accounting for 170 of the honorees.

The Commissioner’s List honors student-athletes who maintained a 3.5 grade point average or better during the 2015-16 academic year while the Academic Honor Roll honors those student-athletes who maintained a GPA between 3.0 and 3.49 for the academic year.

The Red Wolves had 91 student-athletes named to the Commissioner’s List, while 79 student-athletes were named to the Academic Honor Roll.

Conference wide, Women’s Track & Field and Cross Country had the largest number of student-athletes on the Commissioner’s List with 141 followed by Women’s Soccer which had 138. Football led all sports on the Academic Honor Roll as 262 student-athletes were named to the list. Baseball was second with 134 on the Academic Honor Roll.

Recently, the A-State men’s cross country, football, and volleyball teams were recognized by the Sun Belt Conference for winning Team GPA Awards.  The athletics department saw over 50 student-athletes graduate during the 2015-16 academic year.

The Red Wolves have seen their academic performance reach an all-time high during the last three years including a 3.070 all-department GPA in the fall of 2015, a semester which also saw a school-record 213 student-athletes named to the Athletics Director’s Honor Roll. The athletics department also posted its best ever department-wide APR (Academic Progress Rates) score each of the last two years, according to the latest data.

A-State’s women’s bowling, women’s golf, women’s tennis, and men’s cross country claimed Public Recognition Awards from the NCAA during the past year for earning multi-year APR in the top 10 percent of all teams in each sport.

• Information compiled from Little Rock and Arkansas State sports departments.

The post News and Notes – Aug. 11, 2016 appeared first on ArkansasSports.Net.

∗ Arkansas State volleyball team got its preseason underway on Tuesday. And head coach David Rehr said things have started well for the team after completing two practices the first day.

“I wasn’t really sure what to expect for the first time since I’ve been here,” Rehr said. “Usually I have an idea of what we will probably need to work on heading into camp, but we came out and were solid in almost every aspect of the game.

“There’s still some work to do obviously and we will have good days and bad days, but all in all, today was a good day for the team.”

∗ The NCAA selected Arkansas-Monticello A.D. Chris Ratcliff to be chair of the Division II Women’s Basketball Committee.

“I am truly humbled and honored to be named chair of the NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Committee,” Ratcliff said. “The committee is a great group of people who work tirelessly for the benefit of the sport of women’s basketball and student-athletes throughout the country. I look forward to this year as we work to keep the momentum moving forward.”

Ratcliff has served as a member of the national women’s basketball committee and chairman of the central regional advisory committee for the past three years.

Among the duties of the committee are selecting teams for championship competition, determining the host institution of championship sites, providing oversight and supervision during championship competition, arranging officials for championship competition, revising and updating championship manuals and determining regional alignment and allocation of bids for championships.

The post News and Notes – Aug. 10, 2016 appeared first on ArkansasSports.Net.