For the first time, UNLV Athletics has earned the Mountain West Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) Community Service Award, the league announced.

For the 12th consecutive academic year, members of the MW SAAC challenged each other in a league-wide competition for the Community Service Award. This year’s contest had the league’s institutions counting their total hours of assistance while participating in various service activities around their respective communities.

From March 2016 to February 2017, the 11 MW institutions tallied 46,935 hours of community service.  UNLV registered an eye-popping 13,058 hours of service to easily win the top spot. Nevada, Reno finished second with 7,957 service hours and Air Force was third with 5,719 hours.

The award was presented by Deputy Commissioner Bret Gilliland to Director of Athletics Tina Kunzer-Murphy, Community Service Coordinator Autumn Spicer and UNLV SAAC representative Janelle Nguyen of the Rebel swimming and diving team during the men’s first round game of the 2017 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament.

“We are committed to assisting our student-athletes in developing into people who know how important it is to give back to their community,” Kunzer-Murphy said. “I am so proud of all of our student-athletes who volunteer so much of their time to the people of Las Vegas. Autumn Spicer has done a phenomenal job overseeing our community relations efforts and we are honored to win this year’s award.”

In conjunction with the MW Community Service Challenge, the conference also announced its All-MW SAAC Community Service Team and women’s soccer player Emily Casale was this year’s UNLV representative.