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Alex Shillow -
Dominique Ramsey
Ramsey named to second team
COMMERCE – Two Texas A&M University-Commerce football student-athletes have been named to the 2020-21 Academic All-America® Football Team, as Alex Shillow earned first team honors and Dominique Ramsey earned second team honors on Tuesday.
Division II members of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) select the Academic All-America teams, and for the 2020-21 academic year, these honorees were based on career accomplishments instead of single season statistics.
Shillow earns Academic All-America honors for the second consecutive season after earning second team honors in the 2019 season. This is the first Academic All-America honor for Ramsey.
The duo are the 17th and 18th CoSIDA Academic All-Americas in A&M-Commerce history, and the football team now has eight honorees in program history. The Lions have had at least one CoSIDA Academic All-America in each of the last five years, which marks the longest streak in Lion Athletics history.
Shillow – a redshirt senior from Pflugerville – becomes the third Lion student-athlete to win multiple CoSIDA Academic All-America awards, and the first Lion football player to do so. Andrew Davis (men's basketball) was a third team honoree in 2012 and a first team honoree in 2013, and Jaslyn Wacker (volleyball) was a second team selection in both 2017 and 2018.
Shillow has distinguished himself on the field, in the classroom, and in the community during his career at A&M-Commerce. In January 2020, he was elected to his second term as the National Chair of the NCAA Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and has served as the president of the A&M-Commerce SAAC, which has won the last three LSC SAAC Cups and been selected to reveal multiple Make-A-Wish recipients.
He was a 2019 and 2020 nominee for the American Football Coaches' Association's Good Works Team and recipient of the NACDA John McLendon Minority Postgraduate Scholarship. In 2020, he was a national semifinalist for the National Football Foundation's William V. Campbell Trophy, and due to the unique settings of the pandemic, he will likely be eligible for these awards again in the 2021 season.
Following the 2019 season, Shillow was honored as a CoSIDA Second Team Academic All-America, the Lone Star Conference's Fred Jacoby Academic Athlete of the Year, and the Lone Star Conference Academic Player of the Year in football. He graduated summa cum laude with his bachelor's degree in sports management in August 2019 and his Masters of Business Administration in December 2020, and continues graduate work currently in preparation for his final season of eligibility.
On the field, Shillow has been named Second Team All-LSC in 2019 and 2017 with 159 tackles, four interceptions, 17 passes defended, three fumble recoveries, and 5.5 tackles for loss in 36 games over three seasons.
Ramsey – a redshirt senior from C onvers e (Judson) – earned three All-American honors in 2019 and has four postseason All-American awards in his career. He was named First Team All-American as an all-purpose player by the Associated Press and Second Team All-American as both a return specialist and safety by the Division II Conference Commissioners' Association (D2CCA). The Cliff Harris Award nominee was also named to the Dave Campbell's Texas Football All-Texas small college team, and earned First Team All-Super Region Four honors from the Division II Conference Commissioners Association as both a safety and return specialist.
He was named the National Football Foundation Gridiron Club of Dallas Scholar-Athlete in 2021, as he graduated with his bachelor of science in industrial engineering in May. He's been named to the President's List once, the Dean's List four times, and the LSC Commissioner's Honor Roll five times. He was also a 2019 Academic All-LSC selection.