The NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct (CSEC) is reminding conferences and independent institutions to expedite the nomination process for the 2004 NCAA Sportsmanship Awards.

The deadline for nominations is April 15, which means conferences should be finalizing their nominations among those received from member institutions.

Conferences and independent institutions were sent a memorandum from CSEC Chair Woody Gibson in January outlining the nomination process.

"We hope the conference-driven nomination process will call more attention to sportsmanship at the local level," said Gibson, the athletics director at High Point University.

Leagues are to solicit nominations for male and female sportsmanship award winners from member institutions, then select one winner from each gender to be considered for the national award. Independent schools are to submit their nominations directly to the NCAA national office for consideration.

Teams that have exhibited extraordinary sportsmanship may be nominated as well.

Nominees are required to have "demonstrated consistently good sportsmanship and ethical behavior in their daily participation in intercollegiate athletics."

"Good sportsmanship and good conduct is something that's an expected behavior -- you expect people to act the way they are supposed to," Gibson noted. "The problem is that people not acting the way they are supposed to is what draws attention. This nomination process is an attempt to get various conferences involved with identifying student-athletes who have been good sports and good citizens throughout the year."

Conferences are asked to submit all member nominations in order to assure their recognition by the NCAA (certificates will be forwarded to the directors of athletics of each nominating institution). National winners will be announced in June and recognized at the Citizenship for Sports Alliance Annual Banquet held June 13. Winners also will be recognized at halftime of a 2004 football or basketball contest, and at the 2005 NCAA Convention.

Nomination forms may be downloaded from the CSEC Web site at www.ncaa.org/educationprograms/sportsmanship.