Aurora University and the athletic department announced the 2017-2018 recipient of the Spartan Man of the Year Award. The honor has been bestowed upon recent AU graduate Jacob Stockman.

The Spartan Man of the Year award honors a graduating male student-athlete athletes who has exhausted his eligibility and distinguished himself throughout their collegiate careers in academics, athletics, service and leadership.

Stockman captured the top Spartan athletics honor following a tremendous collegiate career for the baseball program. During his phenomenal senior season, Stockman was awarded the unique distinction of earning Academic and Athletic All-American honors. He earned the CoSIDA Google Cloud Academic All-America honor along with selections as an ABCA/Rawlings Third-Team All-American, First-Team ABCA/Rawlings Midwest All-Region Team, a D3baseball.com First-Team All-Region selection and earlier this spring he was named the 2018 Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference Pitcher of the Year and First-Team All-Conference, and CoSIDA Academic All-District. 
 
"Jake Stockman had a tremendous career at AU. He committed daily on the field and in the weight room to get better every year and this work ethic was rewarded by being named an All-American this year," said AU Associate Director of Athletics for Student-Athlete Wellbeing / Senior Woman Administrator Nicki Pieart. "Jake was also committed off the field by engaging in a number of service events and serving as the co-president for our Student Athlete Advisory Committee. He got the most out of his four years as a Spartan and has truly discovered what matters. He will continue on with these lessons as he embarks on his career with Camp Ozarks." 

Excellence in the classroom was a constant strength of Stockman's as a Spartan as he completed a perfect academic career with a 4.00 gpa. He graduated with numerous honors including the Golden Ivy Leaf Award, Summa Cum Laude, was a four-year member of the AU Dean's List, a four-time Spartan and Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference Scholar-Athlete.

In the community, Stockman participated in numerous giving opportunities as he served on the AU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), including Aurora Food Pantry, Hesed House, Triple Threat Mentoring, Head Start program and Project Linus along with the AU SAAC food drive as part of Cans Across the Conference.