2011-12 SUNYAC Commissioner's Cup Standings
Archive of SUNYAC Commissioner's Cup Finishes from 2000-01 on (courtesy of SUNYAC.com)

FREDONIA, N.Y. – The State University of New York at New Paltz, with an overall score of 6.11, boasted a fourth-place finish in the final 2011-12 State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) Commissioner's Cup standings, as announced Wednesday by the conference office. It marks the Hawks' best-ever result in the final Commissioner's Cup standings.

The Commissioner's Cup point system is determined by the 20 different conference sports in the fall, winter and spring. A 10-point system is used in each sport. The first-place team gets 10 points, the second-place team gets nine and so on. A team's regular-season finish is added to its postseason finish and divided by two for its final total for that sport. The total number of points that a school accumulates is divided by the number of conference sports it has. This school total determines the overall winner at the end of the year.

SUNY Cortland once again took over the top spot in the standings, winning the SUNYAC Commissioner's Cup for the 15th time in the award's 16-year existence. The Red Dragons sported an overall score of 8.56 points, while SUNY Geneseo ranked second with a score of 8.12. SUNY Oneonta placed just ahead of New Paltz with a score of 6.68, while SUNY Plattsburgh (5.86), The College at Brockport (5.69), SUNY Fredonia (5.65), Buffalo State (5.44), SUNY Oswego (4.33) and SUNY Potsdam (2.81) rounded out the remainder of the league.

New Paltz qualified for a total of three conference finals during the fall of 2011 (women's volleyball, women's tennis and women's soccer), and women's soccer claimed its first-ever league title by defeating Cortland, 1-0, in the title match. Men's soccer qualified for the SUNYAC Men's Soccer Tournament for the first time since 2004, as it entered the conference tournament as the No. 6 seed before falling to Geneseo in the quarterfinal round. Field hockey made the SUNYAC Field Hockey Tournament for the second time in as many years, claiming the league's No. 3 seed, while women's cross country and men's cross country placed fifth and ninth, respectively, at the 2011 SUNYAC Cross Country Championships.

During the winter, women's basketball finished the regular season in second place in the league standings and made the semifinal round of the 2012 SUNYAC Women's Basketball Tournament, while both swimming teams took fourth at the 2012 SUNYAC Swimming & Diving Championships. Men's basketball ranked eighth in the final SUNYAC standings and qualified for the 2012 SUNYAC Men's Basketball Tournament.

The spring marked an improvement for women's lacrosse, which finished out the season ranked seventh out of nine teams in the conference standings. Softball matched its 2011 result by ranking eighth, while baseball placed seventh in the final conference standings.

Last year, New Paltz finished fifth in the Commissioner's Cup standings, which was its highest finish in the history of the department at the time.

New Paltz sponsors 14 sports affiliated with the SUNYAC: baseball, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country, field hockey, women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's swimming, women's tennis and women's volleyball. Cortland has won 15 of the 16 Commissioner's Cups awarded since the competition began during the 1996-97 academic year. Geneseo won the Commissioner's Cup in 2002-03.