LOCK HAVEN, Pa.- With 14 of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference's 22 yearly Championships now complete, following the conclusion of the Winter season, West Chester sits in second in the 2022-23 Dixon Trophy Standings entering the Spring 2023 season.
Powered by an Outstanding Fall season, Gannon remains atop the standings with an overall average of 13.29, thanks largely to a 14.8 average amongst its women's teams. West Chester rose to second after a strong Winter season with a department average of 12.36. Slippery Rock is now third in the standings with an 11.09 department average, followed by Shippensburg in fourth at 11.04 and Kutztown in fifth at 10.88 to round out the top five.
West Chester's women's programs remain second in the PSAC in points, averaging 12.71 points, while the Golden Rams men's programs are fourth in the league, averaging 12.00 points. Leading the way for both the Golden Rams men's and women's programs in the 2022-23 winter season was the West Chester swimming and diving program, scoring 18 points each after capturing their 24
th (men's) and 16
th (women's) consecutive PSAC Conference Titles. Women's basketball scored 15.5 points after advancing to the Conference Semifinals for the first time since the 2017-18 season, while men's basketball logged 14 points of its own after earning a bye to and hosting the Quarterfinals for the first time since the 2018-19 season. Both squads picked up a share of the PSAC East Regular Season title after strong regular seasons, giving the women's team its first such title since the 2017-18 season, while the Golden Ram's men's squad accomplished this for the first time since the 2006 season. The West Chester track and field programs also scored points for WCU during the winter season, with the men's team logging 10 points, behind a sixth-place finish at the Indoor Championships (the team's best finish since a fifth-place showing in 2017-18), while the women's team logged seven points of its own with a 10
th-place finish at the Championships.
The Dixon Trophy is awarded at the end of each academic year to the league's most successful program based on conference playoff and/or regular-season finish. Standings are compiled based on the average score for all PSAC Championship sports each school sponsors. Equal to its total membership, each conference sport champion is awarded 18 points, and a descending point value is given for respective place finishes. The second-through last-place values vary depending on the number of teams that sponsor the sport.
West Chester has won the Dixon Trophy five times, including the last two times it has been awarded consecutively (2018 and 2019). The Golden Rams have, in fact, won the Dixon Trophy five of the last eight times it has been handed out since the 2012-13 campaign. West Chester has lifted the trophy in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019.
Introduced in the 1995-96 academic year, the award is named in honor of F. Eugene Dixon, Jr., former chairman of Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education's Board of Governors. Since then, nine PSAC institutions have claimed the Dixon Trophy. Shippensburg leads the league with eight victories, followed by West Chester's five. Lock Haven and Bloomsburg have three titles apiece, and California (Pa.) follows with two victories. Gannon, Kutztown, Slippery Rock, and Millersville have each won once.
The final update of the 2022-23 Dixon Trophy standings will be released following the conclusion of the spring championship season in May of 2023.
