In a week where Arizona State’s men’s swimming & diving team has piled-up awards, another comes for work done outside the pool.
Tiago Behar was named the Elite 90 Award winner for the 2024 NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Behar, a junior, is majoring in computer science and holds a perfect 4.0 GPA.
This makes a sweep of the Division I awards for the Sun Devils this season: US National Team member Lindsay Looney won the women’s award.
The award is given every year to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average who competes at the final site of each of the 90 NCAA Championships. Eligibility requires that athletes must have been a member of their team for at least two years and be an active participant at the championship competition.
In cases of ties, the student-athlete with the most completed credits wins the award.
Past ASU Elite 90 Winners
- 2009-10 – Andy Workman (Baseball), Finance, 3.903
- 2012-13 – Bailey Wigness (Softball), Communication & Political Science, 4.00
- 2013-14 – Ianeta Hutchinson (Water Polo), Psychology, 4.00
- 2017-18 – Roberta Liti (Women’s Golf), Management/Business (Sports & Media Studies), 4.00
- 2023-24 – Lindsay Looney (Women’s Swim and Dive), Family and Human Development, MS, 4.00
- 2023-24 – Tiago Behar (Men’s Swim and Dive), Computer Science, 4.00
Behar finished 46th in the 50 free (19.58), 47th in the 100 free (42.56), and 29th in the 200 free (1:32.86) at the NCAA Championships, all of which are new personal bests.
He finished 7th in the 200 free at the Pac-12 Championships.
Behar is a native of Lutry, Switzerland.
Arizona State won the men’s NCAA title in Swimming & Diving last weekend in Indianapolis. In addition to Behar’s award, Arizona State head coach Bob Bowman was named the SwimSwam Coach of the Year, Leon Marchand was named the SwimSwam Swimmer of the Year, Zalan Sarkany was named the SwimSwam Breakout Swimmer of the Year, and Ilya Kharun was named the SwimSwam Freshman of the Year.
ALL-TIME WINNERS, ELITE 90 AWARD, NCAA DIVISION I MEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING
| YEAR | AWARD | NAME | DIVISION | SCHOOL | CONFERENCE | SPORT | MAJOR | GPA |
| 2010 | Elite 90 | Elliott, Andrew | 1 | The Ohio State University | Big Ten Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Finance | 4.00 |
| 2011 | Elite 90 | Farra, Justin | 1 | The Ohio State University | Big Ten Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Political Science and Economics | 3.874 |
| 2012 | Elite 90 | Sterling, Brent | 1 | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Biological Sciences | 3.98 |
| 2013 | Elite 90 | Sterling, Brent | 1 | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Biological Sciences | 3.98 |
| 2014 | Elite 90 | Stewart, Tynan | 1 | University of Georgia | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | English | 4.00 |
| 2015 | Elite 90 | Stewart, Tynan | 1 | University of Georgia | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | English and Cognitive Science | 4.00 |
| 2016 | Elite 90 | Lile, Nathan | 1 | Gardner-Webb University | Big South Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Computer Science | 4.00 |
| 2017 | Elite 90 | Ransford, Patrick | 1 | University of Michigan | Big Ten Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Mechanical Engineering | 4.00 |
| 2018 | Elite 90 | Ransford, Patrick | 1 | University of Michigan | Big Ten Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Mechanical engineering | 4.00 |
| 2019 | Elite 90 | Reilman, Joey | 1 | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Industrial Engineering | 3.94 |
| 2021 | Elite 90 | Oh, Micah | 1 | U.S. Naval Academy | Patriot League | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Applied Math | 4.00 |
| 2022 | Elite 90 | Knowles, Eric | 1 | NC State University | Atlantic Coast Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Materials Science | 4.00 |
| 2023 | Elite 90 | Maas, Derek | 1 | University of Alabama | Southeastern Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Biology | 4.00 |
| 2022 | Elite 90 | Behar, Tiago | 1 | Arizona State University | Pac-12 Conference | Men’s Swimming and Diving | Computer Science | 4.00 |
4.0 gpa and a stem major, wow.
I didn’t have a 4.0 in college and I didn’t play sports.
I bet swimmers probably have better gpas than football and basketball players, perhaps since swimmers have little opportunity of going pro.
Heisman
🤓👆
imagine earning an award for academics and athletics on the NCAA championship winning team… and people are trashing the weight of your degree in a swimswam comment section? Go outside ppl
Seems like a dumb award to me. GPAs aren’t comparable from one school to another.
And unless you’re trying to go to grad school, no one really cares about your GPA after you graduate.
Pretty sure there is a very strong correlation between GPA and career success after graduation, regardless of school
boomer talk right there… I worked at SpaceX and with few exceptions they refuse to hire anyone under a 3.5. I know a few other companies that are similar.
Agree at some level. With grade inflation going wild in elite schools like the ivy leagues and Stanford, a 4.0 in CS at ASU actually means more!
Way to go, Tiago! The Schaffer fam is super proud of you, in the pool and the classroom 💪
I mean, how do you compare GPA given at ASU with those at Stanford?
Fair point, but still impressive considering Computer Science/Math/Engineering/Pre-Med are all going to be more difficult still at ASU than Communications at Stanford (or Spanish at Cal if you’re a native Spanish speaker – looking at you, Hugo)
I mean Stanford is known for having very high GPAs so not sure if that’s the best comparison. I’d imagine Princeton is perhaps the toughest to get perfect grades at out of the schools that were at the D1 swim & dive championships
Electrical engineering at Georgia Tech + D1 swimming would be an egregiously hard combo
In terms of raw workload, yes. However, Georgia Tech has no ± grades which arguably makes it easier to achieve 4.0 rather than a 3.9.
I agree with the general sentiment here that a winner-takes-all approach to this award doesn’t make much sense. They should be recognizing students who are in some top percent of their respective school, much like latin honors.
Nah all of the ivies have grade inflation
Most of them do, I don’t think Princeton does though. Up until (less than) 10 years ago, they even had a mandatory grade deflation policy