Michigan’s Tommy Cope Earns Big Ten Medal of Honor

The Big Ten Medal of Honor is awarded to one male and one female student from the graduating class of each member institution who has demonstrated excellence on and off the field throughout their college career. The highest honor that a student competing in conference athletics can achieve in the Big Ten, the award was established in 1915 and was the first award in intercollegiate athletics to demonstrate support for the educational emphasis placed on athletics. During the past century, the Big Ten Medal of Honor has been awarded to more than 1,300 honorees. These individuals have translated their campus experience into success in all walks of life.

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Tommy Cope, a native of Dayton, Ohio, is the department’s male recipient. He is the 16th Big Ten Medal of Honor recipient from the men’s swimming and diving program and fifth in the last nine years.

One of the team’s four captains this season, Cope was instrumental in helping Michigan recapture the Big Ten championship in February. He was a two-time Big Ten champion, winning the 200-yard breaststroke and swimming a leg on the winning 800-yard freestyle relay. He also won bronze medals in the 200-yard IM and 400-yard IM. He had individually qualified for the NCAA Championships and became a three-time CSCAA All-American after the meet was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cope was an All-American in the 200-yard breaststroke as a sophomore in 2018, and corralled five additional CSCAA All-America Honorable Mentions over the course of his career. His name appears four times on the school’s all-time top performers list; in addition to holding the school record in the 200-yard breaststroke, Cope finished his career ranked sixth in both the 100-yard breaststroke and 400-yard IM, and seventh in the 200-yard IM.

Last year, Cope was awarded the 2019 Bates/Deskins Award, given annually to the top junior student-athlete at the University of Michigan. This year, he was a Big Ten Postgraduate Scholarship recipient and was a CoSIDA Academic All-District At-Large selection. Outside the pool, Cope conducts biomedical and mechanical engineering research with HaptiX Lab and the University of Michigan Hospital, and recently got a paper accepted at the 2020 World Haptics Conference.

An Academic All-Big Ten honoree and Big Ten Distinguished Scholar, Tommy Cope graduated from the College of Engineering with a degree in electrical engineering, and plans to return in the fall to pursue a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering.

Field hockey player Guadalupe Fernandez Lacort earned Michigan’s women’s honor.

— The above press release was posted by Swimming World in conjunction with the University of Michigan Athletics. For press releases and advertising inquiries please contact Advertising@SwimmingWorld.com.