STANFORD, Calif. – Senior Brendan Larkin was named the Pac-12 Men's Rowing Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the conference announced on Thursday, giving the Cardinal its fourth consecutive men's rowing honor.
The award, which is presented in each of the 23 sports the Pac-12 sponsors, was established to honor collegiate student-athletes that are standouts both academically and in their sports discipline.
Larkin has rowed in the second varsity eight for the Cardinal all season, primarily in the bow seat. He helped guide the Cardinal to a third-place finish in the Pac-12 Championships last season.
An electrical engineering major with a concentration in software and signal processing, the senior's cumulative grade-point average of 3.97 is one of the highest among Stanford student-athletes. He was a First Team Pac-12 All-Academic and a First Team Intercollegiate Rowing Association All-Academic selection last season. Larkin, who served as a resident assistant in one of the dorms on the Stanford campus, was a recipient of the Stanford President's Award for Academic Excellence for finishing in the top three percent of his class as a freshman.
He has conducted several studies on campus, including a project learning how to take measurements of spaces on campus from an acoustic standpoint to capture the reverberation characteristics of how the room sounds.
Larkin was the fourth consecutive Stanford men's rower to be named the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Landon Alecxih was honored last season, Kaess Smit was the 2015 recipient and Austin Hack was honored in 2014. Larkin is the sixth Cardinal to be named the conference's Men's Rowing Scholar-Athlete of the Year since the honor since its establishment in 2007-08. Along with Alecxih, Smit and Hack, Alex Syverson (2011) and Mark Murphy (2009) were also honored.
Larkin is the third Stanford student-athlete to be named the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete in their sport this academic year, joining Maddie Bauer (women's soccer) and Peter Galli (wrestling).
In order to be eligible for the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year award, student-athletes must be a senior on track to receive a degree, have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher, participate in at least 50 percent of the scheduled contests in the sport and have a minimum of one year in residence at the institution. Winners are selected by a committee of Pac-12 staff members at the conclusion of each sport's regular season. The athletic accomplishments of the nominees are a consideration in the voting for the award.
Stanford will compete in the Pac-12 Championships this Sunday on the Lake Natoma course near Sacramento.
