Foster, a senior tight end, becomes the first Elon football player to be named the conference's Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Elon University football tight end Matt Foster ’20 has been named the 2019 CAA Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the league office. The announcement on Tuesday, Feb. 11, comes as part of the conference’s release of the CAA Football Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll, which includes 43 Phoenix student-athletes.
Foster has achieved a 3.56 grade point average while majoring in engineering with minors in physics and mathematics. Last month, he was honored on the prestigious FCS ADA Academic All-Star team. A three-time member of the Dean’s List at Elon and a 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-District honoree, he has made the Elon Athletic Director’s Honor Roll during each semester and has earned a spot on the CAA Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll every year.
Foster and Elon baseball student-athlete Michael Borucki recently received a provisional U.S. patent and are set to file for the permanent utility patent for a project they are developing to help people quit smoking and vaping. In 2019, Foster made a pair of presentations at Elon’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum on “On Demand Transdermal Drug Delivery” and “Building an Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging System for Personalized Cancer Treatment.”
On the field, Foster was selected to the All-CAA first team in 2019 after making 19 receptions for 246 yards and three touchdowns. The yardage total was the most by an Elon tight end in the school’s Division I era. He played in 44 career games, including 37 starts, and was part of two teams that advanced to the NCAA FCS playoffs. Foster was a team captain this season and was a two-year member of the Elon Football Leadership Council. After the 2019 season, Foster participated in the College Gridiron Showcase, putting his talents on display for scouts at the next level.
Voted on by the league’s Athletic Directors, Foster’s honor marks the first time an Elon football player has been named the conference’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Elon’s 43 athletes named to the Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll ties the Phoenix for the third-most in the CAA in 2019.